Manufacturer:
Year: 1988

Strap in and get ready for one of them good old racing games... we're talking about Chase HQ here. The game was released in 1988 - a good year for video games, heh! The story is quickly told: you are part of a special cops team and your mission is to capture criminals (that's what cops normally do you know!). The game is composed of five stages through which you drive your black car (looks like being a Porsche or similar). Chase HQ features the standard control for such racing games: accelerator, brakes, high/low gears and one special thingie: a NITRO pack!

At the beginning of each stage you'll see a screen showing your in-built radio system and a nice female voice explains your mission. Message always starts with: "This is Nancy from Chase HQ...". Each stages differs for graphics and kind of opponent: for example, in stage one it's a white sports car, in stage two a yellow Lamborghini and so on... This videogame is really though - too tough at some points. The chase is usually divided into two phases: at the beginning you have to reach your target; then there's a "demolition" phase as I called it, where you have to stop your opponent's vehicle. You do this by crashing into the criminals car (one might wonder why doesn't our own car get damaged, but... hey! we got a time limit, that's also a big burden). :-)

The only way you can crash into the car is from behind though and sometimes slightly from the sides: this makes the "demolition" phase monotonous at times. The time limit is very strict, and you usually need all the time to reach the target, then timer resets. Within the fresh time-limit, you have to demolish the outlaws vehicle and believe me: one or two errors only on your side (such as crashing into a tree or one of the innocent cars roaming the street) can already cost you one credit... it's a very hard game indeed. You can use your nitro packs too, they are a big help, but you only have three of them with the standard configuration.

Whats funny, in some stages a helicopter appears, communicating our heroes the target car is near... nothing else than that; after some time it disappears again - I couldn't find any other reason for it being there! Maybe it's got something to do with the shortcuts. Oh yes, shortcuts: in every stage you can take one shortcut, thus shortening the distance to your target more quickly by driving through a desert part. Game graphics look very well and the scrolling is nice and standard for a racing game of the late Eighties. Sounds are VERY good: nice, dynamic tunes accompany you on your chase. Speech is also very good. Nancy's voice sounds well and your heroes speak with nice "cop-style" voices. At the end of each stage, after dealing with the criminals, you'll see a well-drawn screen in which you confront the criminal car driver.

After five stages, in which you have to capture a murderer, a drug baron, an east-block agent (looking very funny by the way) and some other criminals, you get to see a nice ending sequence where your chief tells you how good and "heroic" you've been. As for the DIP switches, you can actually change some stuff, like the number of nitros you have at the beginning, and the available phase time. Difficulty can also be set - for those sadistic arcade owners who want to get even the last quarter out of our poor player pockets. You can also decide whether you wish to erase the damage on your opponents car if you have to use a continue (this should definitely be turned OFF: the game is hard enough either ways).

Ratings

PRESENTATION: 73%
Nice way the animated title
jumps into the screen.

GRAPHICS: 79%
Well-drawn graphics and
wonderful scrolling.

SOUND: 82%
The different melodies fit
the style of the game. Fast
and good.

ORIGINALITY: 71%
A racing game with a nice twist.

HOOKABILITY: 79%
The speed of the stages
keeps you hooked up.

LASTABILITY: 75%
You'll want to see all of
those well-drawn pictures at
the end of each level.

Ah! a car driving game... and to my endless pity its not a good one in my opinion. Of course, at the beginning I thought "WOW! fast gameplay... nice graphics, great sounds and everything". But already in stage one you see the first negative signs of this little game: the game is HARD! Hello?! HARD! Far too hard: if you just make one slight mistake you can lose a credit, and that gets REALLY frustrating. The way you can demolish the opponent's vehicles is also very boring. You can only hit it from behind and slightly from the side... hey, what happenend to overtaking it and trying to block its path? After the first two or three stages you won't really see anything new, though graphics change a little, all in all it's not enough to keep me interesting. Voices are very good though, same as the ending screens. But all in all, try it out, maybe you like it more than I.

As soon as I begun playing, I felt a kind of sense of deja-vu sensation. Then I understood: scenarios graphics is almost the same as the wonderful Out Run!!! Damn, designers didn't even used their brains to make original graphics eh? Game is good either way, mostly because there are little videogames featuring a car crashing phase... Other good features are good sound tunes and effects, and a nice presentation with explanations of how game plays (this doesn't mean you'll win the game with a credit and zero efforts, eh!)
A nice game though I hadn't much fun with it... try it if you'r hooked at the pictures, but I'm not responsible on your choices. :-)
 

This is one of the best variations on the Out Run theme... Sega's classic immediately came to my mind as soon as I turned the Porsche on and pressed the acceleration pedal... then I started to notice many differencies: higher speed, pursuits, crashes, full presentation, high quality sounds (I believe the Maniacs of Noise themselves couldn't do better than that). And it's also great in terms of graphics!
Missions all look the same: pursuit and crash the criminal vehicle... this is the wakest point of the game for sure, even though it's the main innovation to the driving games genre.
I have to speak about an useful feature: RAINE has the gear indicator which appears at the bottom-left part of the screen, and lasts a few seconds after every gear change (this is necessary since it's an emulation).
Finally, I believe we're standing in front of another wonderful Taitovideogame.

Chase HQ was one of my fav games. I always found its action really funny, altough I think that a Porsche cannot compete against a Lamborghini (oh beloved Countach!) ...so I can't still understand how could they programme stage two of the game!
By the way this product is really well-developed, has a cool attract mode showing all features of each of the involved cars in the chase. Graphics actually fit the racing games "standard" (you know: striped streets and so on...), though having great speed in animations. There are also quality spoken audio samples (that was really cool in the Eighties!) and music is nice and all but invasive. Hookability is high (that's quite a common feature in racing games) but unfortunately game goes too hard in advanced stages, so challenge becomes frustrating. Good game, it's worth a try.
Finally... well, Nancy's been drawn so ugly!