Rally-X
| Rally-X | |
|---|---|
Promotional flyer, showcasing the arcade cabinets used for the title
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| Developer(s) | Namco |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Composer(s) | Nobuyuki Ohnogi |
| Platform(s) | Arcade, Various |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Maze, Driving |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer |
| Cabinet | Upright, cabaret, and cocktail |
| Arcade system | Rally-X |
| CPU | 1x ZiLOG Z80 @ 3.072 MHz |
| Sound | 1x Namco WSG (3-channel mono) @ 3.072 MHz, Discrete |
| Display | Horizontal orientation, Raster, 288 x 224 resolution |
Rally-X (ラリーX Rarī-Ekkusu?) is a driving game set in an overhead, scrolling maze, released in arcades by Namco, and licensed in 1980 to Midway Games for US manufacture and distribution in 1981. It was the first game with background music, and the first game to feature a bonus round. It was Namco's first game with "special flags", to become a recurring object in later games, and the first of only three Namco games of its time period whose score display did not roll over at 1,000,000.
The object of the game is to collect all of the flags scattered around the maze before the red cars catch it. A radar shows the locations of the flags, but not the maze walls.
The player drives a blue car around a multi-directional, scrolling maze. The car automatically moves in whichever direction the joystick is pushed, but if it runs into a wall, it will turn and continue. In every round, ten flags are scattered around the maze. The player must collect all of them to clear the round and move on to the next round. The flags increase in value as they are collected: the first is 100 points, the second is 200, the third is 300, and so on. There are also special flags (indicated by the letter "S") — if the player collects one of them, the value earned from flags doubles for the rest of the round. If the player dies, however, the next flag value is set back to 100 and the double bonus is lost. By collecting the special as the first flag with all 10 flags in one run, the maximum points the player can obtain from each round is 11000. The player will also obtain a fuel bonus after the round is complete, and it varies depending on how much fuel is remaining according to the fuel gauge.
This is the first Namco game to have a soundtrack of background music. This is also the first Namco game to have a bonus round.
Several red cars chase the blue one around the maze, and contact with any of them results in losing a life when hit. The number of these cars begins at three and increases in number throughout each normal round to eight. The first five appear at the bottom of the maze, and the next three will appear at the top of the maze. However, the player has a smoke screen, to use against the red cars. If a red car runs into a cloud of smokescreen, it will be momentarily stunned (but will still kill the player on contact). The amount of time stunned decreases with each level, but will still always cause the red car to chase the blue car using an alternate route. Using the smokescreen uses a small amount of fuel, and using it more than once every 30 seconds will almost ensure that it runs out before the round finishes.
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Wikipedia