Pitstop II

Pitstop II builds on the success of the original Pitstop from 1983 and brings one of the most sophisticated racing simulators of its time to the Atari 800/XL. The player races on the track alongside an opponent on a split screen, which was a technical delicacy on an eight-bit platform in 1984 — both cars move smoothly and independently without the game losing speed. Besides steering, the player must monitor the wear of all four tires separately and the fuel level, and pit into the garage at the right moment, where mechanics changing individual wheels are controlled manually with the joystick. A poorly timed or botched pit stop can ruin even an otherwise leading run, while pitting too often costs precious seconds on the track.

The graphics use Atari's typical color capabilities, and the track scrolls by in pseudo-3D perspective, which combined with the smooth animation of the opponent's car still feels surprisingly fresh today. The game offers several circuits with different characters of corners and straights, so the player must adapt to a different rhythm of shifting and braking each time, and the difficulty gradually rises as faster and more aggressive opponents are added. The sound design is modest, typical of games of the era, but functional — the engine, tire skid, and barrier collision are all clearly distinguishable and give the game the feedback the player reacts to in real time.

At release, the game was praised precisely for its pit-stop mechanic, which no home racing title had handled so thoroughly until then, and it became one of the reasons Epyx was seen as a studio capable of bringing sporting realism to simple control schemes accessible via joystick. Pitstop II influenced later racing titles, which borrowed the idea of strategic decision-making outside the actual driving, and it is still cited today as one of the most influential racing titles of the eight-bit era. Its two-player split-screen mode is among what players remember most from home computers of the time, and in the memories of veterans it remains synonymous with a properly crafted racing game of the eighties.

Why play it: For fans of racing games, this is an influential classic with a sophisticated pit-stop mechanic and a two-player split-screen mode that veterans still fondly recall.