Days of Thunder Review

We all know it, movie-to-game conversions are about as good as dreams-to-reality dating experiences. For the NES, yeah, there are plenty, including the legendary Last Action Hero and the notoriously glitchy and weird Total Recall. Days of Thunder, strange pick, you really can’t do anything with the plot elements, but hey, why not make a racing game from it since that’s the focus? Really, this wasn’t that bad of an idea, and it looks plenty good, but the application just needed more polishing. Definitely not as bad as some seem to think, but phew, this one just loves to piss you off.

One of the areas where Days of Thunder needs some more respect are the graphics. Sure, the cut scenes with the indescribable blob dude sitting on a car if you lose, the strangely well-animated jello man who rides up to the stadium on a blob bike, and the like, aren’t exactly the best in visuals, but during actual play it’s another story. One of the things you have to keep in mind here is that the angle they chose to utilize had to be damn tough to program. Unlike Pole Position or the NES game Al Under Jr.’s Turbo Racing, which we already reviewed, they had to be extra careful to make this game look right.

You have the main screen with various features such as fuel and your gauges, but the racing screen itself is included and your car moves forwards and around corners. With the number of opponent cars on the field, the quick turns, and the sharp angles, they did a really great job of making this game at least look like real racing. Could have added some more spunk through the scenes, but hey, in essence they got the job done.

Musically, don’t expect much, it’s about as awkward as the living blobs you see during the cut scenes. The sound effects are also pretty basic, but definitely enough to feel like a race track. A crowd would have been nice, but oh well. Days of Thunder really only offers sound effects, which sound pretty close to reality, but it’s nothing you’re going to remember.

Days of Thunder is about speed, it’s about the need for said speed, it’s about the race, the fury, the movie – sort of. Days of Thunder loosely follows the plot of the film, but the main focus here is racing, plain and simple. As such, the controls are pretty stock. One button to accelerate, another to brake, but you can also use them to set cruise control, which I don’t believe I’ve seen in another NES racing title. Up and down do nothing while racing, and left and right move you about. Pretty simple.

You also have a damage screen on the right, which lets you know when your tires or engine need work, and trust me, it matters. Damage is caused by hitting other cars or the walls. The engine is only damaged by bumping cars ahead of you. When the abuse has caused enough of a problem, or you need fuel, you go into the pit near the starting line and then have a crew to control to fix tires, refuel, and fix your engine. It’s pretty tense but a nice addition to the game. Check out the basics:

Days of Thunder is remarkably smooth for an NES racing game. The controls are easy to learn, very intutitive, and the cruise control helps you pull ahead. However, that’s only if you have the lack of reality to make it. This game will drive you insane. Progress is so real it kills the fun, permanently in most cases. It takes you at least five laps to pass one car, and that’s only if you hardly make any mistakes. You have to learn to work your cruise control, come into the corners perfectly, and learn when to move ahead.

That wouldn’t be so bad, if they frikken went into the pit once in awhile! That’s right, the opponent cars never go into the pit, and this makes the experience incredibly annoying! Who in the hell decided that!? So, yep, if you go into the pit and you’re about middle-of-the-pack, say hello to the rear…

In terms of creativity, Days of Thunder took a rather novel approach to the racing screen, and the inclusion of the tension-building pit crew subgame is pretty cool. However, it leaves a lot out. No password feature. No save feature. No practice mode. No difficulty settings. Really, this is pretty bare in terms of the basics, so it really doesn’t offer the stuff you’d need, though it does offer a few new developments for an NES racing game. But with the lack of equal footing for the computer, it just gets annoying.

One of the problems with Days of Thunder, mentioned above, is the lack of any sort of save feature. You can’t come back to a track to practice, you either play the whole way through, which takes forever, or you shut it off. Really a bad idea, this game would have done so much better with some sort of password, practice mode, pretty much anything along that vein. If they took the good things from Al Unser Jr. for the NES, it would have been a lot better. But for what it is, you might not have the attention span to stick it through. Advancing takes laps upon laps of near perfect maneuvering, so it’s got realism, but a little more than some of us want out of a damn 8-Bit title.

Days of Thunder is a decent racing title for the NES, but it’s most certainly not the best. Hell it may not even deserve average, and in fact it’s going to annoy most gamers more than a swarm of gnats at a picnic you’ve been waiting a year for. It has this way of slowly getting to you in the worst way possible. You’re racing good, edging on the next opponent, then they bump you just ever so slightly and suddenly you lose a good amount of your turning power and have to pit to make up for it, sighing in disgust when you have to try to make position again after the computer continues to race, completely oblivious to the world of gasoline and repairs. What in the hell do their cars run on, souls? It seems like it after sitting through this one enough. If you feel like a challenge that’s going to age you by fifty years, try it out, but if you feel like having fun, better to watch actual racing while sleeping.