OMG Nintendo

The Commodore 64 has arrived to the Virtual Console and older gamers like me are filled with a sudden onrush of nostalgia. Here is something we grew up with and enjoyed as the first major home computer to hit it big and, in some cases, used as our main gaming system when our parents wouldn’t buy an NES but were willing to buy a C64 since they could use it for things too.

Of course, nostalgia can only carry one so far and as we’re beset by the first three games to be offered from the systems past, we must look them over carefully and see just how good these games actually were, despite whatever we may have felt when we were five years old, joystick in hand and eagerly awaiting the floppy disk to load.

In this case, the first game up is PitStop II by Epyx, a game more than a few former C64 owners might not remember by name but will instantly recognize it as “that game where your tires changed color!”

PitStop II is an arcade-style, two-player, Formula One racing game where you and a friend (or the AI in single-player mode) race for the best time on six individual courses or go through them all in Gran Prix mode to see who can get the highest ranking. In many ways, it is not unlike the arcade classic Pole Position in its racing simplicity though the original PitStop added one or two things that, for its time, made the game a more detailed experience and PitStop II brought them all back.

Those too young to have experienced this game (or the C64 in general) at all may wonder what I meant earlier when I mentioned tires changing color. During a race, if you grind up against the sides of the track while making a tight turn (and this will happen more than once) or bump into another racer acting as an obstruction on the course, your front and rear tires will start to change color, indicating they are wearing down.  The color changes don’t really follow any sensible order but if your tires are white that’s the last step before a blow out takes you out of the race completely. You have to keep an eye on your fuel levels as well as an empty tank also removes you from the competition.

Fortunately, to prevent this, you are given the titular Pit Stop, where you can pull in and take control of your pit crew to refuel and change your damaged tires. You have to be careful though, take too long and your opponent will simply blow right past you. Unfortunately, this is an incredibly likely scenario, as the controls for your wheel changer are very clunky and if you are not standing exactly on the right pixel he will not remove/replace the tire you are trying to change.

PitStop II is also something that was clearly designed to be enjoyed primarily as a two-player experience and, if you can find someone to play with, you can have some simplistic fun racing against each other and pointing and laughing whenever one player gets stuck behind another car that keeps turning in front of them. As a single player experience, PitStop II is sadly far less fun.

To be frank, your AI opponent will cheat like hell. It will occasionally give you a chance to get ahead at some point but then it will suddenly run the final lap perfectly, not giving you a chance to catch up and unlike you, it is able to perfectly position its wheelman every single time in the pit, leaving you to play an impossible catch-up game while all the cars are suddenly, purposefully turning into your path and only yours.

Nostalgia can carry one far.  Unfortunately, when one considers the single-player issues, as well as just how archaic PitStop II is in it presentation and gameplay, the nostalgia cannot carry it to the checkered flag.