Introduction
Checkered Flag is a 3D racing game developed by Rebellion Development and was published by Atari for the Atari Jaguar in 1994. There was also a version developed and published by Atari for their handheld console called the Atari Lynx in 1991. The Atari Jaguar was released in 1993, but the history of the console goes all the way back to 1988 and the development of a British console called the Konix Multisystem, which the chipset was developed by a company called Flare Technology. The Multisystem was never release because Konix ran out of money during the development and the development of the chipset called Flare One was purchased by Atari in 1991 and was the basis for the then cancelled Atari Panther. The Panther was planned to be a 32-bit console that could adequately compete with the likes of the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo. However, the Panther was cancelled in favour of the 64-bit Atari Jaguar, which was at the peak of the bit wars.
The Jaguar was notoriously difficult to develop for because it used two 32 bit processors to add up to the 64 bit system that the console used and the true potential of the console was never reached by many developers. Also, because of how difficult the Jaguar was to develop games for, there was not a lot of third party support for the console, which led to the console inventory being liquidated by Atari in early 1996 and Atari being merged with JT Storage. The Atari name would be bought back by Hasbro Interactive in 1998 and then Infogrames would buy the Atari name back and merge in 2000.
Gameplay
Checkered Flag is a 3D racing game where the player can pick from one of a few game modes including setting time trial, a tournament against other racers or a single race on one course. The major issue with these options is that there is no multiplayer option at all, which for a home console racing game is almost vital and adds a lot more fun to the game. The fact that the game offers a tournament mode and does not allow the player to play local multiplayer slightly dumbfounds me because there was multiplayer even in Virtua Racing, which can be considered one of the games competing with Checkered Flag at the time. In the time trial mode the player can decide how many laps they want to do varying from 1 to 99 laps, which I think is a cool feature because some racing games restrict the amount of laps the player can do.
The graphics of the game have not aged very well at all, however for an early 3D racing game that used polygonal shapes, it did a good job at adding some really nice details. The polygonal shapes of the cars do look blocky and rough around the edges compared to the Playstation graphics quality, but considering that this game came out before the Playstation was released it still looks good. However, the parallax scrolling being somewhat too quick, sometimes there is a tendency for the graphics to become somewhat blurry and can make it difficult to see where the player is going sometimes.
The different game modes offer some replayability, but the major issue that the AI racers are very easy to beat once the player knows the track. There is no options to change these difficulty settings to offer the player more of a challenge, which I feel is a missed opportunity of offering the player more replayability. I think however the amount of variety in the race tracks does help the game offer the replayability that the difficulty doesn’t because there are quite a lot of different tracks all with unique layouts. The tracks are designed in such a way I think that initially it is quite confusing about what the best line to take is and what speed to take the corners at, but once a few laps are completed, then I got used to the track.
The controls of this game for me I found to be actually quite good and responsive because even though the game runs at a low framerate, the car responds very well. There is never a feeling that I am not in control of the car and if I do crash into a wall then it is my fault. The thing I like the most is that the player has the choice of customising both the look and the handling of the car by having different paint jobs and different spoiler heights. The spoiler heights allow for high top speed but slippery handling with the low spoiler or really good handling but low top speed with the higher spoiler. I found the higher spoiler easier to use because the difficulty of the AI meant that I didn’t need a lot of speed. There are also a good variety of camera angles that can be selected by using the number pad on the controller and I like the fact that the game has this choice because I have my own preferred camera angle that other players might not like. The only criticisms I have of the controls is simply that when I apply the brakes, the sensitivity of the braking is too sensitive because the car comes to an immediate stop almost, meaning that precision braking is not an option.
The final thing of note that I noticed was that the framerate of the game was consistent, but the game ran very slow. I know that this might be because of the nature of the game and how primitive the hardware was that, but I think if the full potential of the hardware was able to be used, then the framerate of the game could have been much smoother. However, at least the framerate of the game is consistent, compared to other early 3D games of the time like Star Fox that had some issues with lag.
Conclusion
Checkered Flag is a game that I find I can play for short periods of time and really enjoy the game, but I sat down with the game for more than 20 minutes, then I would get bored quite easily. However, considered that this game is 1994, some of the issues with graphics quality and lack of some features I can give the game the benefit of the doubt because the things it does right it does quite well. I think the negative reception this game received is justified but I found the more I played it, the more I liked it.
6/10
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