Let's Compare Chase H.Q.!

[TrekMD]

Over on the Evolution of Race Car games thread, Chase H.Q. was posted.  So, let's take a look at the home ports of this game on this "Let's Compare" video.

[align=center:24h2hgka]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dBmPPZcRKw[/align:24h2hgka]

[TL]

I absolutely love Chase H.Q.! It was one of my favourite games when it first came out in the arcades and I bought the Spectrum conversion as soon as it was released. Thankfully it proved to be an excellent conversion and despite the monochrome graphics it has all the speed, the speech and most importantly the gameplay that made the original so great. I really want to pick up the PC Engine/TurboGrafx version at some point because I have heard that it's pretty much arcade perfect and it looks the business judging by the videos of it.

[Rogue Trooper]

The Speccy version was indeed fantastic, really captured the look and feel of the arcade game.CPC version looks fantastic for the hardware as well, which made the C64 version even more of an utter diaster still!.Thankfully SCI on C64 (cart) was a huge improvement.

Did'nt like the look of the G.G/MS or NES versions at all.

[108 Stars]

Never played the game, but I feel a bit embarrassed of what the SMS showed here. This barely looks better than NES, and the sound is a joke.

Seeing the GameBoy version made me think about how much smoother the cares would have been scaled on the Lynx. On Lynx there would probably have been no music though.^^

The FM Towns version looks great; ST and Amiga suffer from having the car in a color scheme almost indistinguishable from the asphalt.

[Rogue Trooper]

Looking at C+VG mini-reviews from the time:

PC Eng version scores 88%

But the MS version pulled in 86%.seriousily? MS version looked and sounded awful.No idea how it played, but very surprised by score after seeing it on the comparison video.

[TL]

There is actually a very good History Of Chase H.Q. article in last months issue of Retro Gamer.

In that they praise the Spectrum, Amstrad, PC Engine, MSX and Saturn versions.

They are luke warm over the NES, Master System, Game Gear, Amiga, ST, FM Towns and Game Boy ports.

While they dismiss the tragic Commodore 64 and Sharp X68000 iterations.

[Rogue Trooper]

C64 and Amiga versions did'nt fare too great at hands of zzap 64:

C64 version:overall 53% an anti-climax release, reviewers note it lacks the Speccy versions speed, helicopter and many of the roadblocks, sound fx are poor and game far too easy to beat.

Amiga Overall 67% say graphically a nice ST game has been ported across, pace too slow to recreate coin-op's awesome 'thrill factor', lack of colour dissapointing and illusion of speed poor.

So way to go Mr Speccy, just proves yet again, it's not always about which machine is more powerful, but which is better used.

[Rogue Trooper]

There is actually a very good History Of Chase H.Q. article in last months issue of Retro Gamer.

In that they praise the Spectrum, Amstrad, PC Engine, MSX and Saturn versions.

They are luke warm over the NES, Master System, Game Gear, Amiga, ST, FM Towns and Game Boy ports.

While they dismiss the tragic Commodore 64 and Sharp X68000 iterations.

LOL, i really must start going through the unopened issues of RG i've sat here, think i'm 3 copies behind already.

[TL]

A blatant rip-off of Chase H.Q. for the Master System that cheaply uses the OutRun name:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAJsVAPMd8s

Still, it's actually a pretty good game so worth picking up if you have a SMS.

[108 Stars]

Rip-off or not, it does look and most importantly sound better than the original on the SMS.

[Crusto]

The CPC version was superb and had me totally addicted, speccy version in second place for me. The engine is obviously the real winner, but its a bit of an unfair comparison imo.

[Rogue Trooper]

The CPC version was superb and had me totally addicted, speccy version in second place for me. The engine is obviously the real winner, but its a bit of an unfair comparison imo.

Reading the Chase H.Q feature in RG magazine, very surprised to see how well the NES, MS+G.G versions come off, personally feel all 3 are poor-Where as the CPC+Speccy versions impressed a great deal, very dissapointed by the 8 Bit console versions.

[SnakeEyes]

The Saturn, PC engine, and CPC versions are the ones I enjoyed the most ( especially as the saturn version eas a Chase HQ / S.C.I double pack )

[TL]

I have been searching for this game for ages but just couldn't remember the name of it for the life of me. Well today I found it, completely by accident I may add, on You Tube. The reason I wanted to find it and post it is because it is such a blatant rip-off of the Spectrum version of Chase H.Q., compare the two games and you will see that they look almost identical!

Miami Cobra GT (ZX Spectrum)

[sloan]

The Famicom version never saw a port to the NES. I wish it would have because it allowed use of the Arkanoid rotary controller for steering the vehicle in Chase H.Q. Probably the only home port of this game that allowed a rotary steering controller option.