Turbo Esprit

Turbo Esprit
Turbo Esprit cover, ZX Spectrum version
Developer(s)	Mike Richardson
Publisher(s)	Durell Software
Platform(s)	ZX Spectrum Amstrad CPC Commodore 64
Release	May 1986
Genre(s)	Driving game
Mode(s)	Single player

Review scores
Publication	Score
CVG	29/40
Crash	88%
Sinclair User
Your Sinclair	9/10
Your Computer

Turbo Esprit is a video game published by Durell Software in 1986 for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC. The game was very detailed and advanced for its time, featuring car indicator lights, pedestrians, traffic lights, and a view of the car's interior controls. It may also feature the earliest example of a free-roaming city environment in a computer game. Turbo Esprit was the first free-roaming driving game, and has been cited as a major influence on the later Grand Theft Auto series.

The object of the game is to prevent a gang of drug smugglers completing a delivery of heroin, by tracking down their cars and destroying them, or ramming them into submission. The player takes the role of a special agent driving the titular Lotus Esprit car, which had been used in a James Bond film a few years previously. The player must travel around one of four available cities looking for the criminals. Messages from HQ will flash up periodically giving the location of a target armoured car, which may then be tracked on the map. A courier car would then attempt to rendezvous with the armoured car to transfer the heroin, and the armoured car would then flee the city. Other courier cars would act as decoys.

Players could elect to wait until the drug transfer was complete before intercepting the armoured car, or instead attempt to find the one genuine courier car in order to prevent the transfer from taking place.

Once a drug dealer's car is found it can either be followed, destroyed with the Esprit's built-in machine gun, or repeatedly rammed until it surrenders. Different cars may need to be dealt with in different ways; for example armoured cars must be rammed as shooting has no effect, whereas randomly occurring "hit cars" are the only other vehicles that can match the Esprit for speed, so ramming them is more difficult. Following a drug dealer's car too closely may arouse suspicion and cause them to abort their mission.

Points are scored by apprehending the criminals. Additional points are awarded if they are captured alive (by disabling their car rather than destroying it), and if the heroin transfer has taken place (as there is now greater evidence of their crime).