Enduro Review

Racing games are nothing new on the Atari 2600. Indeed, the system has a ton of them. Still, most all of them have their own little niche or oddity that makes them unique from all of the others. Enduro is no exception to that rule, although the uniqueness of it is based on its length. But is length enough to make it a racing game worth playing despite all of its competition? Read on to find out.

The concept of Enduro is simple. You drive along a racecourse, passing as many cars as you can. You use the joystick to drive and the button to accelerate. A typical Atari 2600 racing game control scheme, but it works effectively. Anyway, each day in the game takes place in five stages: light, ice, light, evening, and night. After night, the game goes back to the first light stage. At this point, a lap is completed. If you haven’t passed enough cars over the course of the lap, you lose. Otherwise, you get to go on for another lap. Each lap takes five to ten minutes, so this isn’t a game intended to be played in short bursts.

Does the game get old going on this long? Not really. With each change in the environment the play changes as you have to change your reaction speed and style, having to pay particularly close attention during the night stages. Still, after a while, you might get tired of the game, as it can become slightly repetitive. It will take a while for that to happen though, and even if it does, the game will be worth coming back to again after a while.

Aesthetically, this game looks okay for a 1983 game. It’s main flaw is that it looks less realistic than 1982’s Pole Position, something for which there is little excuse. Still, the graphics in this game aren’t bad otherwise, and it is always possible that they were trying to distinguish this game from Pole Position. The sound effects in this game are decent, but they aren’t really anything special.

What then is the conclusion? This game might last long enough to become boring if you’re really good at it, but otherwise, it is just a longer game, a nice sight on a system where most games can be played and lost in less than three minutes if you’re bad at them. For that reason, if you are a fan of Atari 2600 racing games, I recommend you try to find this game and buy it if you can find it inexpensively.