THE SPECTRUM GAME DATABASE CHEQUERED FLAG PUBLISHER Psion AUTHOR Stephen Kelly Stephen Townsend (Put in the Engine) YEAR 1984 DESCRIPTION A formula 1 racing simulator. CONTROLS: Accelerator: key "0" Brake: key "I" Gear change up: key "M" or any key right of M Gear change down: key "N" or any key left of N Steering fast left: key "A" slow left: key "S" slow right: key "D" fast right: key "F" Pause: key "H" Press again to continue Abort the race: key "H" and "T" together INSTRUCTIONS Please see the inlay card text. CHEATS None SEQUELS None INLAY CARD TEXT Chequered flag is a fast moving motor racing simulation in which you have to negotiate some of the worlds famous racing circuits. From behind the wheel of your thoroughbred formula 1 racing car, you have a dinamic view of the outside world flashing past and of continuously changing instuments on your dashboard display. Watch the various landmarsk appear over the horizon and snake towards you - trees, milestones, rocks and warning arrows, a lake etc.. There are even hills to climb and descend. Keep and eye on your instruments to achieve maximum performance and avoid skidding or overheating. Your car has been carefully programmed to model accurately the dinamics of a real racing car and you even have a choice of cars. Peak power will be delivered at the appropriate revs, and drag and road traction are all evaluated. In order to achieve maximum performance you will need to change up and down the gears to keep the revs at the optimum level, and if you take the corners too fast you will start to slip sideways. But don't worry, to make things easier you can opt for a car with an automatic gearbox - at the cost of a little power of course. Your dashboard display features full analogue speedometer, rev counter, fuel and temperature gauges along with a gear selection indicator - plus lap timer and lap counter. The steering wheel is also visible and turns in response to your commands. Driving a racing car is a very skilled business, and apart from keeping on the road and trying to establish new lap or race records, you will have to avoid various hazards and look after your car. OIL/WATER - driving over oil and water on the road will dramatically reduce your grip and induce a skid if you try to turn. OFF THE ROAD - if you put a tire off the road your ride will get rather bumpy and the car's performance will be impaired. Don't go too far off the road or you'll crash! GLASS - running over glass on the road will cause a tyre to burst, inducing a dramatic wobble and serious loss of performance. You must limp round to the pits to have a new tire fitted. OVERHEATING - Constantly over-revving will cause you temperature to rise, resulting in a blown up engine if you dont take it easy. a visit to the pits will cool you down quickly. take care that you don't change down a gear at high revs because this is also likely to cause sever overheating. FUEL - If you undertake a very long race, you will have to watch the fuel gauge. Stopping at the pits will refuel the car. PITSTOP - Just pull over to the side of the road by the pits and come to a halt. A full service will be performed, including new tires, fuel and some engine cooling. All that remains now is for you to select the circuit, car and number of laps, and there you are, on the grid waiting for the light to turn green.... [the keys] THE CIRCUITS Ten circuits have been programmed into chequered flag, most of them modelled on world famous Grand Prix circuits. Your choice is between: Brands Hatch Monaco Psion Park Cambridge Ring Silverstone Paul Ricard (France) Microdrive Saturn sands Osterreichring (Austria) Monza THE CARS FERRETI TURBO Immensly powerful, this turbo charged car develops 640 BHP between 8000-10000 revs giving it super acceleration. A very difficult car to handle, and only recommended to the more experienced racing drivers. PSION PEGASUS A new car feturing the latest technology and the highest standards of engineering. Develops 560 BHP between 5000-10000 revs and has an exceptionally low-drag coefficient. A very fast car which is also reasonably easy to drive. MCFASTER SPECIAL This car has an automatic gearbox, making it the ideal choice for the more inexperienced driver. Nevertheless, it is still very fast and reliable, devloping 500 BHP. Psion cassettes for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum are designed to load over a very wide range of volume and tone settings on your tape recorder. If you have any difficulty, ensure that the head and pinch-roller of your tape recorder are quite clean. Cleaning kits for this purpose are widely available. SINCLAIR(R) & ZX Spectrum(R) are the Registered Trade Marks of Sinclair Research Limited. BACK BLURB: Ever wanted to drive a Formula 1 racing car flat out round a circuit? CHEQUERED FLAG places you behind the steering wheel. You'll need one eye on the road and one on the dashboard as you steer and brake to avoid hazards and work your way through the gears in search of a lap record. An exciting full colour machine code game. SCORES RECEIVED 71% - Crash 3 (April 1984) NR - Your Spectrum 1 (Jan 1984) URL NOTES This game took 10 weeks to write. The game was also released in a Spanish and a Timex version. There was also a ROM verison produced for the Spectrum interface (I can't remember if it was ever released). Stephen Kelly also wrote Frogs, SuperGlooper and Tempest on the ZX81 and did the graphical front end for Scrabble, Backgammon and converted Match Point onto the Spectrum for Psion. He went on to be a founder member of The Bitmap Brothers. Stephen Townsend wrote a number of games for MikroGen and is still at PSION working on the Series 3.