Vette!

Vette! is a 1989 racing video game where the objective is to race a Chevrolet Corvette through the streets of San Francisco. The game was notable for its detailed un-shaded polygon rendering of the San Francisco streets. It was released on three floppy disks with a Black & White, or a Colour version available. It was also released with instruction manual that gave detailed specs about the cars and details about various areas in the city.

For other uses, see Vette (disambiguation).
Vette!
Cover art
Developer(s)Sphere
Publisher(s)Spectrum HoloByte
Producer(s)Joe Scirica
Designer(s)Dan Geisler
Gilman Louie
Programmer(s)Dan Geisler
Jinda Pan
Sky Chang
Joe Tretinik
Kus Pranawahadi
Erick Jap
Artist(s)Dan Guerra
Matt Carlstrom
Jody Sather
Composer(s)Jinda Pan
Platform(s)MS-DOS, Macintosh, NEC PC-9801
Release
  • NA: October 1989
Genre(s)Racing
Mode(s)Single-player, Two-player (null-modem for MS-DOS, AppleTalk for Macintosh)

The game features a 3D rendered San Francisco, including landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco Bay Bridge[1], and Lombard Street, known as the "Crookedest Street In The U.S."

A Sega Genesis version was planned but never released.[2][3][4][5]

Features
  • Car damage that affected the car's engine and handling.
  • Full control over the game's camera views, including an interior cam with a full working dashboard.[6]
  • The ability to drive anywhere within the modelled city, including highways, tunnels, and bridges.
  • Pulling over at the various gas stations repairs the car.
  • The player is able to run people over.
  • Driving erratically can attract the attention of a nearby cop to give chase. Then getting pulled over there are 8 excuses to choose from unless charged for vehicular homicide, by running over at least 1 pedestrian during the chase, or within close proximity of a cop.[7]

Copy protection

At the beginning of the game, a question from the manual requires a correct answer to prove game ownership. If the question is falsely answered, the game can be played for a limited time before a window popped up claiming, "You are Driving a Stolen Vette" and the game crashes.

Reception

Tony Dillon of ACE praised Vette! for its "complexity of design combined with clever simplicity in presentation" and its varied gameplay, and opined that the game "doesn't quite have the edge over Stunt Car, but it sure isn't far behind."[8] Peter Scisco of Compute! favorably reviewed the game, describing it as "Falcon AT on the ground". He praised the game's detail and EGA graphics, only criticizing the lack of sound card support, and concluded that "Vette! surpasses other driving simulations in its scope and realism".[1]

Trivia

During the development of this game, the large-scale communist attack on protesting Chinese students in Tiananmen Square occurred. In memory of that event, one of the programmers snuck this string into the program executable: "IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO WERE MURDERED IN TIAN-AN-MEN SQUARE ON JUNE 4, 1989. J.P. "[7]

References
  1. Scisco, Peter (November 1989). "Vette!". Compute!. pp. 84–86.
  2. "Winter Consumer Electronic Show: Entertainment Software "On The Pass Line" - New Computer Games at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show — Making a Competition". Computer Gaming World (in Japanese). No. 68. Russell Sipe. February 1990. p. 42.
  3. "Outpost: Genesis - 'Vette (Sega)". Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 13. Sendai Publishing. August 1990. p. 86.
  4. "Genesis Does... What Nintendo Don't - Summer CES Report (The 1990 International Summer Consumer Electronic Show): Sega of America - Vette". Mega Drive Fan (in Japanese). No. 7. Tokuma Shoten. August 1990. p. 73. Archived from the original on 2020-12-05. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  5. "Entertainment USA: Release Rundown - Mega Drive". Raze. No. 4. Newsfield. February 1991. p. 15.
  6. "Vette! (1989) - PC Game". www.squakenet.com. Retrieved 2022-02-15.
  7. "Vette!". Ultimate History of Video games. Retrieved 2022-02-15.
  8. Dillon, Tony (November 1989). "Screentest: Vette!". ACE. p. 50.
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