Developer: Atari
Publisher: Atari
Release Date: 11-28-94
So far, we have been talking about Jaguar games that look nice but play somewhat poorly. Well Club Drive is a nice change of pace. It’s a game that both looks bad and plays bad. The graphics look like a parody of what people thought computer animation would look like in the mid 80s, and it is all about driving wobbly cars toward boring and unclear goals. The fact that it came out in late November on the same day as another poorly received first party racing game, Checkered Flag, is certainly one of the reasons the Jaguar failed. If you can’t even do a decent racing game after a whole year of practice than you have problem. It’s not like decent racing games are that hard to make. Almost every console has at least one. The 2600 had quite a few good ones. In their early arcade years Atari practically popularized the genre. But when it came to Jaguar they seemed completely lost. At least it’s good for a few laughs.
(What more do you need to know? Also note that the tv is showing your game in progress as if seeing it once wasn't bad enough)
Considering how bad this game looks the backstory is hilarious. The game takes place in the future where normal driving is obsolete, and people come to the Club Drive amusement park to drive death-poof cars in exciting environments. Well that at least explains the game’s dumb golf-styled name. This game is supposed to look futuristic, but it’s about as advanced as a Model T. The cars can’t kill anybody, but patrons could easily die impaling themselves on any of the thousand sharp, 90 degree angles to be found everywhere. I’ve never seen a blockier 3D game. Everything is made out of single-colored geometric shapes. It’s a bad sign when you see your car for the first time and can’t tell if you’re looking at the front or the back. I know some people will argue that graphics don’t matter, but that’s a strange notion in a visual medium like a video game. Graphical power may not matter as far as overall quality, but nothing can be more distracting in a video game than bad graphics. This is especially true in a game like Club Drive where the graphics are so bad it’s hard to tell what anything even is. Nothing’s funnier and more depressing than seeing a legless, perfectly rectangular cat that looks more like a toaster with a hood ornament than any kind of animal. How is it even moving? Is that a cat with wheels? If so, why am I not able to drive the cat around? That sounds like more fun the regular game. Even my six-year-old knew it was bad.
(It must be San Francisco. It has hills!)
The gameplay isn’t much more inspired than the graphics. I know this is listed as a racing game, but it’s more of a driving simulator. At no time will you be racing against other cars. There is a racing mode, but it’s actually just a solo drive from point A to point B and back. I suppose the goal was to show off the good graphics by having the player experience the whole environments. Too bad they forgot to include any. There’s really no way to lose this mode so the only goal is to try to get a better time. At least it saves high scores. The other mode has you collecting pods scattered around shortened versions of the levels. Once again, the goal is to simply improve your own best time. Unfortunately, the pods pop up in a different order every time, so the goal is practically negated. How are you supposed to improve when it’s all random? All the while your car shakes and skids like it is constantly driving on a block of ice. It’s a true triple threat. It’s looks bad, plays bad, and controls bad.
(I think that's Iron Soldier off in the distance. I wish I was playing that game instead.)
So with Club Drive we have the Atari Jaguar’s first true stinker. Sadly, it won’t be the last, but it’s one of the more entertaining of the Jaguar’s total disasters. What really solidifies it’s infamous place in history is its release date. Some of the real stinkers came out closer to the end of the Jaguar’s life when Atari was circling the drain and was just trying to recoup some of it’s losses. Club Drive came out soon after the console went national. By then the Jaguar had a few good first party games, but the double whammy of Club Drive and Checkered Flag certainly put a damper on things heading into Christmas of 1994. I hope Jaguar owners got Tempest 2000 instead. As far as my rankings go I am putting it, appropriately enough, right above E.T. at #108. I don’t like the order of some of my bad games, so it may be subject to change. It’s at the bottom of the Jaguar list of course, but since we still have games like Fight for Life on the horizon that won’t last forever. At least there’s that.
Jaguar Quality Percentage: 0/3
Jaguar Rankings
1. Cybermorph
2. Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy
3. Club Drive
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