Planet Bob - Playing Tracker (C64)

RSS Bot · September 8, 2008

Hi there!

Off we go, with yet another one of those weird ancient 3D games:

Tracker is another game from the Rainbird label. After Brittish Telecom had such a massive hit on their Firebird label with Elite, they really seemed to jump onto anything as long as it looked somewhat complicated and had 3D graphics. Remember Starglider and The Sentinel? Yup, all the same publisher

Rainbird was the prestige label of Brittish Telecom and they tried to make these games really special. They would add an audio tape with the games sondtrack for example, or as in this case add a 30 page novel for a background story. Starglider even had both I think. And IIRC did my original Tracker tape come with a poster.

Now in Tracker you're fighting with some mighty AI over the control for some grid structure. You're controlling vehicles moving around the grid, the computer controls some and when they meet, they fight. Which is a very lame 3D action scene :roll:

Your main goal is to destroy the center spot in the middle of the grid. And the computer AI will defend it with everything it has available.

Of course in my first attempt today I failed miserably. Reminded me of the times when I was playing it as a kid :lol:

At least I learned enough to have some ideas for a better try tomorrow

BTW: There's also 16-Bit variants (Atari ST and MS-DOS) of Tracker available. The conversion team didn't really like the C64 version tough, so after some iterations they ended up with a significantly different game. AFAIK they even wrote a second novel for a new background story.

Greetings,

Manuel

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