Omega Race

The Good
Midway’s Omega Race was as successful as Asteroids before it. The object of the game is to fly your ship around a circular track, blasting droids that get in your way. You also have the opportunity to ricochet off the sides of the rectangle in the center and crash into droids if you don’t take it easy. Versions of the game were released for the Atari 2600, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, and VIC-20. This review will cover the VIC-20 version.

Let’s start with the cover. Omega Race is stored inside the standard gray cover with the VIC-20 logo on the top left. These types of covers are reserved for games sold by Commodore themselves, and the covers contain a cutout in the middle, letting you see what the manual looks like if you open it and take the contents out. As well as the cartridge, flyer containing instructions, story, and brief details of the gameplay is also included. Commodore’s approach to covers for its 8-bit machines is equivalent to the covers you get for any console at the time.

The VIC-20 version of Omega Race is an excellent port. It boasts great vector graphics, and I like the explosion that occurs when you hit a droid. Everything in right here, including the “robotic” font that matches the arcade’s, as well as the prologue at the start of the game. In addition, you also get to choose what control method you want to use (joystick or paddles), as well as the choice to modify the background and ship colors.

The music in the game sounds similar to the loop from “The Twilight Zone”, and this loop goes faster if one of the droids go rogue and bounce around the screen. The sound effects are quite good and matches what happens on screen.

The Bad
There is no keyboard support. So if you have a VIC-20 computer without a joystick or paddle, tough.

The Bottom Line
Omega Race for the VIC-20 is an excellent port by Commodore, where you zoom around a track, shooting droids and ricocheting off the sides of a rectangle that houses your score and the number of remaining ships left. The controls take a little time to get used to, but once you mastered the game, you will find it a lot of fun, especially considering it also serves as a “score attack” game. Definitely a worthy title to add to your VIC-20 collection and it is something that VIC-20 owners should be proud of.

The Good
I really enjoyed the smooth sprite movement and crisp graphics of the ships in the game. And of course, the unique "rebound" movement off of the boundaries at the edges of the playfield. If I recall, the arcade game was vector based (like asteroids or star castle--drawn with lines rather than pixels) but the designers did a good job of recreating the ships for the Vic 20 in pixel form. It's a game that lets you clear a few levels at moderate difficulty before getting absolutely too hard, which I appreciated because my video game skills aren't the best.

The Bad
Nothing.

The Bottom Line
Not much got lost from the arcade to the Vic 20 on this game. The smoothness of the controls for thrust, ship movement, rebounding, etc. makes for a very enjoyable game. I brought it home and my Dad wound up enjoying it as much as I did. Probably my favorite game for the Vic 20. When I first played the game I'd try to stay in one spot and not move much, but I found to be really successful at this game, it's helpful to really learn how to use thrust and rebounding to get you where you want to be on the screen. A lot of fun overall.