"Hi-Octane", a Wipeout lookalike

[Roger]

I found a bunch of Saturn games at a flea market the other day. One of the games was Hi-Octane, developed by Bullfrog and distributed by Electronic Arts. The game is ©1995 and shares a lot of design ideas with Wipeout:

- it's a race game with anti gravity "cars"
- 9 tracks, multiple routes
- 6 cars (with varying speed, power, shield specs)
- weapons: machine gun, missiles
- "reload zones" for fuel, shield and weapons
- several game types: single race, clone race (=time trial), death match...

Unfortunately, the Saturn version suffers from severe frame rate problems - the refresh sometimes drops well below 10 fps, even though the graphics are quite blocky (the Saturn isn't a huge polygon pusher). The box art shows screenshots from the PC version, and they look quite neat.

The best bit is that I found the PC version is abandonware and can be downloaded (http://gamebird.dk/games/community2.php/?gid=116) for free. Go ahead and check it out! :)

Oh yeah, here's a link to a review. (http://www.csoon.com/issue12/hioct.htm)

[piranha wiper]

er how do you get it to work all i get is a pic of the frog on a garage door thing and nothing happens after that, ive pressed every button i found on the keyboard nothing happens, other than that it sounds quite good especially the DEATH MATCH bit elimination mode on w3o me thinks, when i was reading what you said Rog, i thought you ment that it was a new game and then i thought about bulfrog being still around.

[Roger]

As I said (wrote), the game is from 1995 (same year as the Play Station launch, Wipeout and all that!). As for the download, I haven't tried it myself, 'cause I haven't got a PC.

[G'Kyl]

Oh, rest in peace, Bullfrog. As for Hi-Octane, that was a fantastic racing game, probabaly the best of its time. I own the PC version and still play it when the occasional nostalgia hits me. Yeah, the DM mode is fun, but what made the game really great was the feeling of flying through (and I mean THROUGH, not through-but-still-on-a-racetrack :) ) its mostly urban environments. The only bad part was that you couldn't steer left when charging the turbo by holding down SPACE. Go figure.

PW: What system did you try installing it on?

Roger: Are you sure it's abandonware? I'm asking because most older games are simply called that way without the developers ever declaring the software as abandoned. Just a question...

Oh, just one more thing. Before all you gyus start looking for a working copy of the game: I wouldn't compare HO with WO, since the game has a completely different feel about it. It's sounds very similar, alright,but it plays SO different.

Ben

[piranha wiper]

er eer, if you mean windows then xp, if you mean what company or something that is installing the game, its nullsoft install system, other than that i cant much else

[Lance]

.
i downloaded it a few years ago. passable, though not equal to WO. it was already abandonware then. i think Bullfrog pretty much declared all their stuff public domain, but i don't know for certain
,

[G'Kyl]

Oh, I was asking for your OS, of course. :-)

Yea well, that might be a difficult one. I never tried ´running HO under XP. Do you happen to have another working Windows version available? AFAIK, the game runs fine under Win9x, so maybe you could try that. Or give the compatibility mode a try...

Ben,
caressing his DOS-computer. ;-)

EDIT: Lance: Since bullfrog was in its last days practically owned by EA, who can be... a bit picky when it comes to their property, I wasn't so sure about their games being abandoned propery. Not that it mattered, of course. :) I was just thinking aloud... errr... in writing... whatever. ;)