Blog:Car Race (MSX)

CRV (talk) 00:09, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Everyone's got to start somewhere, and everyone includes Kan Naito.

Naito is better known as the founder of Climax Entertainment, the company behind Landstalker, Dark Savior, and Runabout, but he made his professional debut as a teenager back in 1983 with this MSX title. (He wrote about it in his column in Mega Drive Fan magazine.)

[UPDATE!] Naito has corrected me on Twitter; his first game was actually Neko no Bouken (猫の冒険) for the PC-6001. Now back to Car Race...

It's a rather simple game: Drive your car down the road, avoid other cars, and pick up fuel.

It's also somewhat counter-intuitive because the faster you drive, the less fuel you use. You need to step on the gas right away, or you will drain quickly.

Car Race was published by Ample Software, where Naito was working part-time. Yuichiro Itakura and future Genius Sonority president Manabu Yamana also worked there. Itakura left and started Zap, where he was joined again by Naito and Yamana. Naito and Yamana then headed over to Chunsoft, where they worked on Dragon Quest games, and the rest is history.

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Post updated December 15, 2020