Speed Haste

6_1The blah graphics don’t help this game.

Speed Haste (aka Circuit Racer) delivers your standard arcade racing fare on DOS, where you go up against twenty other computer-controlled cars and attempt to hit each checkpoint before the time runs out and you get the dreaded Game Over. The game allows you to swap between racing styles before each race, so you can either go at it Formula One style or in a Daytona-ish stock car.

Including two separate car models to switch between is an interesting twist — but Speed Haste is such a dated title, there’s nothing innovative in the actual implementation. Speed Haste looks extremely good for a game that came out a lot way back in 1995, but it’s baffling why WizardWorks chose to release this one in the wake of Moto Racer, a much superior arcade racing game.

For starters, the graphics throughout the game are dull, suffering from repetitive textures, drab colors, and mostly flat-shaded, boxy-looking cars. You can choose from six cars per race (three manual and three automatic), but darned if they don’t all handle pretty much the same. There are subtle variations depending on the type of car you’re driving — the F1 requires more delicate handling, while the stock cars allow you to perform powerslides.

Unfortunately, the control for both vehicles is simply uninspired, not to mention lacking in the realism department. Scraping into another car just slows you down, and piling into a wall results in a tiny jerk, not the flaming pile of twisted metal you’d expect.

10_1There is an abundance of tracks to race on (none of which are car-specific), though few of them are going to win any design awards. Trackside details are sparse, and the backgrounds look like something from OutRun. Each track has a different musical theme, but you’ll be tempted to turn off the music. The racing itself in this DOS-dated game won’t turn any heads in the long run. But hey, Speed Haste is a budgetware release, and so we can’t have everything.

System Requirements: 80486DX2 66 MHz, 4 MB RAM, DOS

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