Talk:Firetrack

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Comment[edit]

"It resembles the 1982 arcade game Xevious in style and gameplay."

I disagree; I think it is more probable that Firetrack was inspired by the 1984 arcade game Star Force. I think Firetrack is much closer to Star Force in style and gameplay than it is to Xevious. Even the music in Firetrack sounds suspiciously similar to the music in Star Force. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.41.217.115 (talk • contribs) 06:54, 29 August 2006

Many thanks for your comments. I haven't played (or even seen) StarForce (but will look for it). If you feel any part of Wikipedia requires to be changed, feel free to change it yourself! Any other details about Firetrack would also be welcome! Preacherdoc 07:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Curious about the Sideways RAM enhancements[edit]

I've played Firetrack on a 32 k BBC B, and on a Master 128. The BBC B version alternated between two level tunes, whereas the Master version only played a single tune. Nick Pelling cannot account for this. There was certainly no indication that the music was any better with the Master's enhanced RAM, and really, I can't imagine any way that the music of the 32 k BBC B version could be improved upon, as it was already using every sound channel it could. There is no evidence of a third tune (no-one's ever recorded it).

I was not aware that the graphics became more detailed either -- shadow RAM gets you, as far as I understand it -- double-buffered graphics at a cost of decreased frame rate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ghiraddje (talk • contribs) 00:18, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Technology[edit]

I always suspected that this game ran in MODE 2, although didn't have that many colours, and used EOR with a carefully defined palette in order to avoid redraw which would have slowed it down. Does anyone know if this was the case? :) Buckethed (talk) 08:58, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It uses more than four colours (you can see blue, yellow, black, red and magenta together on the first level, at the very least), which means it must be MODE 2 or MODE 7, and we can rule out MODE 7 because that's Teletext! So unless there's some really tricky mid-raster palette-swap trick (I don't know what's possible on the Beeb) then it would have to be MODE 2. 86.131.98.77 (talk) 23:05, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Release timing[edit]

Were the C64 and BBC versions released simultaneously? File:FiretrackEUBoxShotC64.jpg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was originally the C64 version, but has since been replaced by the BBC version (stating "Slightly larger image"). I was going to move the file to something like File:Firetrack cover (BBC Micro) but then wondered if perhaps the C64 version was released earlier... and/or if the artwork was different. Any ideas? -- Trevj (talk) 16:09, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]