Review
by Brian Dear
Staff Writer
If Houston traffic is not exciting enough, the radio fare not funky enough, hit the road with Interstate '76, a 3-D driving combat simulator set in a parallel '70s universe.
Interstate '76 stems from the same designers who dazzled Windows 95 game-goers with Pitfall, The Mayan Adventure. Their latest efforts disappoint only those lacking in computer power. If you have the power, this groovy, funkadelic slide into a '70s hell is better than a glass of refreshing Tang.
Enter Groove Champion, auto-vigilante; Taurus, partner-in-crime, sporting an Afro and an attitude the size of his 1969 Jefferson Motors Sovereign; and finally, Skeeter, neurotic, mechanic-extraordinaire. The Interstate '76 story is standard kick-ass revenge fare, but its 1976 Southwestern United States setting is unique and entertaining.
Groove is finishing a vigilante job his murdered sister began. Groove seeks Antonio Molochio, his sister's killer and mastermind behind a plot to destroy key oil reserves in the American Southwest. Since Molochio is a public do-gooder, the cops are of no help, so Groove drives his sister's 1971 Picard Piranha (outfitted with the appropriate weaponry), and blasts through the desert to stop the conspiracy.
The cinematic quality of I-76 borders on outstanding. Each mission begins and concludes with an animated movie scene, providing an almost seamless transition into the "action."
The animation was not elaborate by Disney's standards, but competes well against the quality of current virtual reality style graphics. However, from a movie director's point of view, the pre-mission scenes are fantastic. The film contains multiple camera angles, close-ups - the full palette of film tools.
The only flaw in I-76 makes the game inaccessible for many computer owners; It requires too many system resources to make it run on many machines. The program requires at minimum a Pentium 90mhz, 16 megabytes RAM, a 4x CD ROM drive, and 80 megabytes of uncompressed hard drive space. In English that translates into a really fast, really new machine to run I-76.
For a departure from garden variety, futurescape computer adventure, hop into the driver's seat of Interstate '76. With a funky original soundtrack, gas-guzzling muscle-cars and Slurpee-drinking excitement, I-76 promises a good trip.