Dragster

"A great racing game for those nostalgic gamers out there!"

Dragster is a unique racing game for the Atari 2600. It blends high-speed action with realism and that really drew me into the game. Like many Atari games, Dragster is quite simple, you start off with a drag car, as the timer counts down, you get ready to shoot off the light when it says go. The tension builds as it counts down, and once it reaches zero, you must use split second reactions to get off the line. To shift into gear, you move the joystick to the left, and let go of the gas while you do it. If you get your timing right, you can shift without slowing down at all. Your objective is to reach the quarter mile mark in the least amount of time. Do you have to worry about your time, you need to worry about how fast the computer, or your friend is going so that you don’t lose. A touch of realism that really grabbed my attention was the fact that you could blow the engine by over-revving. Hardly any games now have that, why wasn’t the idea used more? It doesn’t make sense when cars in newer games can over rev for hours and hours on end, and the engine never dies… it just shows you how older, cruder games like this can actually be better in some cases. If you get a chance to play this game, you’ll be surprised at how much detail went into it, considering it was an Atari game and there wasn’t much room for realistic features for most games. You will be surprised, pleasantly surprised.
8/10

Graphics

Nothing earth shaking, but at least you can stand them compared to most other Atari games. The dragster has a very visible, large back tire, and a smaller one at the front. The engine is placed in the middle of the car, just in front of the driver. For the amount of polygons on the screen, you will be surprised at how detailed everything looks. The engine looks like an engine, and when you blow an engine, it kind of spatters all over the side of the car, well enough so that you actually think you blew the engine, its very impressive. Another thing that caught my attention was the movement of the wheels. As your car speeds up, the wheels move accordingly, that just blew me away when I thought of hard it would have been to do on the Atari. All this may sound incredibly simple now, but it must have been intricate work back then to puzzle together.
8/10

Sound

Sound wasn’t used as a backbone of the game, but most Atari games didn’t depend on sound, mainly because the sound quality wasn’t good enough. Dragster does use sounds, but no music or anything. You’ll start off with the timer ticking down, and the cars revving of the idle cars, but as soon as the starts, you’ll hear the virtual roar of the glorious engine as it tears down the quarter mile. And if by some chance, you blow the engine, you’ll hear a CRASH followed by silence. Those are just a few examples of how sound is used in Dragster.

Difficulty--- Easy

Once you know how to shift and the right time to bolt off the line, you’ll be able to beat the CPU or your friends quite easily.

Replay Value

If the competitive nature of this game doesn’t drag you in, then the quest for the lowest time will. You will literally spend hours trying to beat your record. Over and over, until its virtually impossible to get any lower. Replay value is just one of the many great things about this game.
9/10

Dragster is a great racing game for any fan of the Atari 2600. If you aren’t sure if this game is for you, just take the plunge anyway. Atari games are only about 3$ now a days. Games like this are in short supply though, so just keep an eye open on websites or garage sales or else you’ll be kicking yourself when you miss out on the opportunity.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/29/02, Updated 06/29/02