YS Megagame. Crash Smash, Sinclair User Classic. C+ VG Hit, Games Machine Star Player. What Toaster? Best Buy. Goat Breeders' Gazette Recommended Purchase... need I go on? Chase HO was a confirmed classic when it first packed its bags and made its lonesome journey from coin-up to computer conversion back in 1989. Luckily, it was at least one and three quarters times as good on the Spectrum than on anything else. The super-fast and smooth graphics (minus colour), the sound (yes, sound, including digitised speech), the playability, the addictiveness. All this, and practically everything else in the coin-up seemed to have been miraculously squeezed into rubber keyed chum, just going to show the Spectrum is by no means on its last legs. (Which is quite ironic because the legs fell off my Speccy years ago.) I'm beating rather annoyingly around the bush again, but I hardly know where to start - even though I've almost finished the review.
The game is a straight race-'em-up where you have to catch up with a baddy and then ram him off the road, all within a time limit. This makes a great change from boringly racing against the clock; and there are loads of great touches, such as jumps in the road, tunnels to drive through, splits in the road and a great intro .... sequence. Oooh. Wibble. Sorry - but I just couldn't the control my excitement any longer. I'm just going to have to make Chase HQ a Mega-game again.