N: Kikstart 2 (Mastertronic, Commodore 64, 1987)
It’s not often that you play an old video game and think that it’s just like a modern one but easier, but here we are. The Kikstart games are just like Ubisoft’s Trials games but easier. Just like Trials, Kikstart 2 is a side-on quasi-platformer in which you control a motorbike over a series of jumps and other obstacles. The resemblance is because they’re based on the same real life concept, so it’s only the lack of others that makes for such an obvious comparison, of course. No one looks at demos of FIFA 19 and thinks ‘ah, this is just like Emlyn Hughes International Soccer’ even though they’re based on the same sport.
Nonetheless, it’s interesting to see where Trials and Kikstart 2 are similar and differ. Both are based on rhythm and on a careful balancing of speed and caution. They both quickly decide that they need to up the ante from real life, too. Kikstart was based on a BBC TV series called, yes, Kick Start, which had to deal with such constraints as ‘health and safety’ and ‘a budget’ and did not therefore feature jumps over massive jets of flame. The computer game version has no such constraints. Trials just takes the same idea comically further. Likewise, regular crashes sending riders flying in a crumpled heap weren’t really the thing for television, but both games delight in causing terrible ends, before resetting the rider in place as if nothing had happened.
The resets are one area where Kikstart 2 is much more generous, putting you at the end of the obstacle you were on, rather than making you keep repeating it until you reach a checkpoint. It’s not an easy game by any means, but it does something quite different from Trials. Trials features two of the different approaches to challenge outlined in my Thrust entry, layered on top of each other. Your twitchy, overpowered bike is easy to overbalance even on flat ground, and then you get all kinds of traps thrown at you too. In Kikstart 2 you don’t have to control lean backwards and forwards, so you don’t have the same number of ways to fall. You merely have to manage the speed and jumps, which is already plenty to handle, when different ground and obstacles require you to avoid going too fast or too slow. It’s still easy to fall, a lot, but the main effect of doing so is just a loss of time.
The reason for the difference is that the focus in Kikstart 2 is firmly on competition. It’s split-screen, whether against another player or the computer, and it wants you to be able to see the other player at a similar point on the course, even if you’re way behind from time penalties. Which is a good decision! You compete on aggregate score across a series of courses, and much of the appeal that I explained for Winter Games applies here too. Even on the most difficult courses, it’s a level playing field and doesn’t keep you around for long. It doesn’t have the same variety as a compilation of different sports, but it does its best with variety of obstacles and settings, including some atmospheric night time courses. Add to that a level editor, which I mention because the child me that had time for video games stretching out would have loved it, rather than because I intend to get to grips with it now, and the potential for enjoyable contest goes on and on.
