Hi Octane - Gameplay

Hi-Octane is a vehicular combat / racing game made by Bullfrog and published by Electronic Arts. It was released in 1995.
Developer Peter Molyneux stated that in May 1995, EA set Bullfrog under pressure to release Dungeon Keeper in six and a half weeks. "Because I wasn't prepared to sacrifice Dungeon Keeper, I wrote and designed a game from scratch in six weeks: Hi-Octane," Molyneux recounted. To allow the development of the game in such a short time, the Magic Carpet engine was used. Producer Sean Cooper's account is slightly different, stating that the game was developed in eight weeks, as a way to "fill a quarter that didn't have enough revenue". Due to time constraints, all the vehicles actually have the same speed, despite what their stats say in the game.
The game was based upon their earlier Magic Carpet game code and offers a choice of six hovercraft vehicles differentiated by their top speed, armour, firepower, weight and appearance: KD-1 Speeder, Berserker, Jugga, Vampire, Outrider, and Flexiwing. There are six tracks to race on, with names like New Chernobyl which hint at a dystopian futuristic world (although the game does not feature a backstory). The tracks offer different difficulties, various textures and types of landscape like wastelands and city streets. Certain parts of the track allow to recharge vehicle's fuel, shields or ammo, although the vehicle has to slow down in order to fully benefit of the recharge. There are also power-ups on the tracks, recharging fuel/shield/ammo (10, 100 or 200%) or upgrading the car's minigun, missile or booster, for more power. Other parts of the tracks changed in the course of racing, opening shortcuts or places with scattered upgrades for a short time.
The different vehicles display different handling values in the front end but these are just for show, the underlying stats are the same for all the vehicles. Due to the dimensions of models the vehicles appear different sizes but in fact the collision volumes are all identical meaning that you are just as likely to hit something with the Outrider as you are with the Jugga.
There are four camera views, switched while playing: three of them are from behind the vehicle with one being further away than the other, and the fourth view is from the front of the car, with no parts of the car obscuring the sight.
Source: Wikipedia

[@djinn_tseng]

wow one of the many dos games i’ve played and forgotten about. this game was so cool as a kid.

[@NostalgicGames]

I had some problems with getting the right emulation speed for Dosbox and I'm not actually sure if the game ran too fast or if that was the intended speed but it was almost impossible to get it to run at a constant framerate because it either slowed down in certain moments or sped up. However it was still playable after some time getting used to it 😁

[@Freforio]

Hey, definitively too fast, I also ran it that fast back in the day unkowingly and years later revisited the game and noticed how much more controllable it is since it was running at the normal speed.