It's the Stone Age, and millionaire playboy Millstone Rockafella arranges a bike race of the wilder kind: The winner will receive the Ultimate Boulder Bash Bike - a must-have for every cool caveman. Which is why eight teams - six of them consisting of two persons and the other two of single dinos - race in this tournament. Among the riders are some well-known VIPs (at least to those who have spent lots of time playing other caveman games): Chuck Rock and Chuck Jr., Cliff Ace and Roxy, Stiggy and many more.
In the main menu you choose how difficult your game will be: Practice, Easy, Medium and ROCKHARD. Each level of difficulty has eight heats, which makes a total of 32 tracks. If you win all eight heats, you gain a trophy. After having been successful in all races, you will receive the coveted boulder bash bike.
The first thing you must do is choose one of the five teams to race against. The next screen is a 3D racetrack, and the camera zooms to your Fred Flintstone-esque bike, waiting for the starter-caveman to wave the flag. All bikes (except those of the dinos) have a sidecar with the second team member. He/she is responsible for hitting the other bikes with his/her special weapon. There are hammers, clubs, a screaming female, et cetera, depending which team you chose. If you hit one of the other bikes, they either are damaged, or they drift off the track. But be careful -- if you are hit or if you ram the other bikes (or the obstacles on and beside the track), your bike can be damaged, too. If your bike is wrecked, you have to use one life to restart the current race.
The first race is in Rock City. After that you have the night rally, desert drive, jungle rumble, swamp stomp, blizzard blitz, cave rave and finally the volcano dash. If you gathered enough points during each race, you get the trophy and the scenes repeat with more difficult tracks.
For real fun, try the two player split-screen mode and race against your friends. This feature increases the replay factor dramatically.
The controls are a bit confusing at first. If you have no joystick you accelerate with Q and brake with A. To go left press ',' (comma) and to go right use '.' (full stop). Use Tab to punch and to activate your nitro boost. Hitting A while steering makes it a handbrake turn. Press P to pause the game. When the game is paused, you can change graphical detail levels with the function keys (F1, F2...).
The graphics in the game are quite good. (320 x 200 pixels, bitmap objects in a "flat" 3D world). If you play in a windowed DOSBox, you might want to have it full screen, but after seeing the fullscreen mode on a 19'' display, you will rather switch back to windowed mode.
The game runs more smoothly when you turn off the sound using setup.exe. You won‘t miss it, since there are (unfortunately) just a few medium quality SFX and very annoying music.
To conclude, I have to say that BC Racers is a nice racing game that used the up-to-date technology of the early 90s. If you love games like WackyWheels, you may have a lot of fun with BC Racers, but it simply doesn't have the quality to become a classic; the tracks are not varied enough and there are no powerups or special weapons you can discover. I give it 3 out of 5.
Dear Abandonia visitors: Help us keep Abandonia free with a small donation. Abandonia is like an old gaming arcade with only original games. Abandonia helps you have fun four hours and years. If Abandonia is useful to you, please help us forget fundraising and get back to Abandonia.
