Apply directly to the forehead! Wait, that's a joystick in your hand, not some placebo wax scam. (It's disgraceful how antique software like this never got on my local station's Jeopardy block while that snake oil did.) Now there's a car rolling right towards you in this garish maze, and you're weaving in and out of lanes. This isn't Pac-Man, but it's the beginnings of that formula, with dots to grab and Game Over-s to avoid. Sega-Gremlin had pioneered today's Snake clones with 1976's Blockade; Head On did much the same for maze games before the decade's end.
When this first released in Japan's arcades and adjacent venues, Space Invaders had spent a good half of a year dominating players' attention and wallets. Both games took some time to achieve their breakout sales, but Sega's success with this innovative, US-developed microprocessor board showed the industry that neither Atari's Pong nor Taito's alien shooter were fads. Genre variety was steadily creeping into game centers the world over, and Head On itself was one of the first hybrid titles moving past a ball-and-paddle model. In a sea of sit-down Breakout clones and taikan racers emphasizing the wheel and cabinet, Gremlin's new versus screen-clearing duel of wits must have seemed oddly esoteric.
It's very simple to us today, of course. You drive one car, the AI another, circling a single-screen maze of corridors filled with collectibles. The goal: grab every ball to get that score bonus, all while avoiding a direct collision! But it's easier said than done. Head On's secret sauce is the computer player's tenacity to run you down, driving faster and faster the more pellets you snag. Rather than accelerating in the same lane, you can move up and down to exit and enter the nearest two paths, which works to throw off the AI. The player's only got so much time before the other racer's just too fast to dodge, though, so slam that pedal and finish the course before then!
No extends, a barebones high scoring system, and limited variation across loops means this symmetrical battle of wits gets old fast. There's a bit of strategy to waiting for the AI driver to pass over dots and turn them red, which you can then grab for more points than before. By and large, though, this is as simple as the classic lives-based maze experience gets. I heartily recommend the sequel from that same year, which uses a more complex maze and a second AI racer to keep you invested for much longer. Even so, the original Head On more than earned its popularity. It improved and codified a genre merely toyed with earlier that decade. Gotcha and The Amazing Maze look like prototypes compared to this, something designer Lane Hauck probably knew at the time. Contemporary challengers from later that year, like Taito's Space Chaser or Exidy's Side Trak, each tried new gimmicks to stand out, but the Gremlin originals are frankly more polished and intuitive to play.
While Gremlin never again made such an impact on the Golden Age arcade game milieu, this formed part of Sega's big break into a market then led by Atari, Taito, and Midway. Monaco GP that same year kept up this momentum, as did Head On 2, and many clones spawned in the years to come. Namco 's own Rally-X iterates directly on this premise, though most know a certain pizza-shaped fellow's 1980 maze game better. Gremlin Industries arguably became more important as Sega's vector developer and U.S. board distributor going forward, but none of that would have happened if these early creations never went into production.
Anyone can give this a try nowadays on MAME or the Internet Archive. I'll also mention the various Sega Ages ports via the Memorial Collection discs for Saturn and PS2. This never got a more in-depth remake a la Monaco GP, and that's a shame given Head On's historic significance.
When this first released in Japan's arcades and adjacent venues, Space Invaders had spent a good half of a year dominating players' attention and wallets. Both games took some time to achieve their breakout sales, but Sega's success with this innovative, US-developed microprocessor board showed the industry that neither Atari's Pong nor Taito's alien shooter were fads. Genre variety was steadily creeping into game centers the world over, and Head On itself was one of the first hybrid titles moving past a ball-and-paddle model. In a sea of sit-down Breakout clones and taikan racers emphasizing the wheel and cabinet, Gremlin's new versus screen-clearing duel of wits must have seemed oddly esoteric.
It's very simple to us today, of course. You drive one car, the AI another, circling a single-screen maze of corridors filled with collectibles. The goal: grab every ball to get that score bonus, all while avoiding a direct collision! But it's easier said than done. Head On's secret sauce is the computer player's tenacity to run you down, driving faster and faster the more pellets you snag. Rather than accelerating in the same lane, you can move up and down to exit and enter the nearest two paths, which works to throw off the AI. The player's only got so much time before the other racer's just too fast to dodge, though, so slam that pedal and finish the course before then!
No extends, a barebones high scoring system, and limited variation across loops means this symmetrical battle of wits gets old fast. There's a bit of strategy to waiting for the AI driver to pass over dots and turn them red, which you can then grab for more points than before. By and large, though, this is as simple as the classic lives-based maze experience gets. I heartily recommend the sequel from that same year, which uses a more complex maze and a second AI racer to keep you invested for much longer. Even so, the original Head On more than earned its popularity. It improved and codified a genre merely toyed with earlier that decade. Gotcha and The Amazing Maze look like prototypes compared to this, something designer Lane Hauck probably knew at the time. Contemporary challengers from later that year, like Taito's Space Chaser or Exidy's Side Trak, each tried new gimmicks to stand out, but the Gremlin originals are frankly more polished and intuitive to play.
While Gremlin never again made such an impact on the Golden Age arcade game milieu, this formed part of Sega's big break into a market then led by Atari, Taito, and Midway. Monaco GP that same year kept up this momentum, as did Head On 2, and many clones spawned in the years to come. Namco 's own Rally-X iterates directly on this premise, though most know a certain pizza-shaped fellow's 1980 maze game better. Gremlin Industries arguably became more important as Sega's vector developer and U.S. board distributor going forward, but none of that would have happened if these early creations never went into production.
Anyone can give this a try nowadays on MAME or the Internet Archive. I'll also mention the various Sega Ages ports via the Memorial Collection discs for Saturn and PS2. This never got a more in-depth remake a la Monaco GP, and that's a shame given Head On's historic significance.
2 Comments
I can't recall any of those other than the maze interludes in Pac-Man World. Usually I think back to Donkey Kong 64's egregious use of Jetpac & the original arcade game as padding.
BlazingWaters
1 year ago