Chase H.Q.

The radio crackles, dispatch reports a fleeing vehicle and you floor the gas — in Chase H.Q. you're no ordinary racer but a cop whose task is to catch the culprit and literally ram him off the road. This simple but ingenious premise made the Taito arcade game one of the most addictive coin-op hits of the late eighties.

The home port for the Amstrad CPC was released by studio Ocean, a master of 8-bit arcade conversions, and the result was among the platform's beloved titles. The principle is two-phase: first you must catch up to the escaping car in a frantic drive before time runs out, and then force it to stop by ramming it repeatedly. The sense of speed, the flashing „You're under arrest!“ and the ticking clock together created the kind of adrenaline only the very best arcade games could offer.

On CPC hardware you couldn't, of course, expect the smoothness of the arcade original, but Ocean managed to carry over the essentials — the drama of the chase, the gradually escalating difficulty of the individual culprits and that feeling that every second is working against you. The option to use a limited number of turbo boosts added a tactical element: when to fire it to reach the target just in time?

Chase H.Q. also became famous for shattering the established notion of a racing game. It wasn't about your finishing position, but about the pursuit, about the role of the law in a fast car — a concept that later inspired a whole range of chase games. For many players on the 8-bits it was the first chance to experience the atmosphere of police action right behind the wheel.

Thanks to its briskness and instant comprehensibility, the port ranks among those CPC titles you fire up „just for a moment“ and then discover it's late at night. It's not a deep game, it's pure, distilled fun — exactly what you want from an arcade conversion.

Why play it: For a brisk, instantly addictive police chase that ranks among the best arcade ports on the Amstrad CPC.