Chase H.Q.

From the back of the Spectrum cassette inlay

The fastest, most thrilling driving game yet!

Take the wheel of your turbo-charged Porsche as you an your partner go in pursuit of dangerous criminals all driving an evil array of souped-up roadsters.

Turbo Boost!

Need to catch up in a hurry? Well just one press of your Turbo Button will leave your eyes in the back of your head!

Barrelling through the city streets, along the roughest of dirt tracks and through busy tunnels - if you can hold the line! The low life can run, but they can't hide...

User Summary

Chase H.Q. was the first in a series of driving games where the object was to chase down and arrest a criminal's car.

Originally released by Taito in arcades, gameplay was similar to Outrun in that the player drove a high-speed car through slower traffic along twisting roads in a variety of different environments.

Like Outrun, the driving controls were simple, with a wheel, accelerator, brake and a Hi / Low gear lever. However Chase H.Q. added a 'Turbo Boost' button to the gear handle.

The player could use this button up three times on each stage to provide an acceleration and top-speed boost.

Instead of racing to the end of a stage, the aim in Chase H.Q. was to catch up with a criminal car and ram it off the road within a time limit. An indication of the distance to the criminal car was shown on the right of the screen.

After catching up with the criminal car, the player would have to ram it to reduce it's health bar, shown on the left of the screen, to zero before the timer ran out.

Successive levels would find the player chasing faster cars with more health.

The game made innovative use of voice samples with encouragement and criticism from your co-driver and information from the police dispatcher.

The game was converted to many of the popular 8-bit and 16-bit computers and consoles of the era.