Chase H.Q.

Chase H.Q. brought Taito's popular arcade concept to the Atari ST, in which the player, as a member of a special police unit, chases fleeing criminals in their car and must catch up with them within a time limit and then physically stop them by ramming their car. Instead of classic racing against rivals, the game is built on a combination of fast driving, tactical dodging of heavy traffic, and aggressive contact destruction of the opponent's vehicle on a busy highway.

Each mission begins with a short briefing describing the wanted criminal, followed by a highway chase in which the player must catch up with the fleeing target before the allotted time runs out, and then damage it through repeated ramming until its car stops and the mission is completed. The game offers a limited supply of nitro for temporary speed boosts and a damage system for the player's own car, forcing the player to choose between caution in heavy traffic and aggression when chasing down the target, since too many collisions with civilian vehicles visibly slow the player down. The Atari ST port preserves the brisk pace of the arcade original, with smooth track scrolling and legible graphics of both rival vehicles and the surrounding landscape, though the audiovisual presentation naturally falls short of the arcade cabinet with its distinctive voice line and synthesized commentary.

Chase H.Q. was among the commercially successful home conversions of late-1980s arcade hits, and its concept of a chase ending in physically stopping the perpetrator inspired numerous later racing action games and sequels within the same series on both arcade cabinets and home platforms. The simple but effective pursuit principle became a model for a whole wave of similarly styled arcade chase games in the following years. Today it comes across as a refreshing reminder of an era when arcade ports defined a large part of the game offerings for home computers, competing for players' attention with original titles.

Why play it: For the simple but effective chase-and-stop-the-perpetrator principle that defined a whole wave of arcade racing games and still works today as a refreshing reminder of the era of arcade ports.