From Paris To Dakar - Playing Victory Run on T-16 for the First Time

Victory Run was one of the four original games launched with the TurboGrafx-16 in North America, in August 1989. At first glance it appears to be just another arcade racer, like Outrun, but it's actually much deeper than that.

The moment you start the game, however, you notice that you have to choose "support parts" for your vehicle, which is immediately different from a game like Outrun.

After you enter your initials, you select the support parts for your car, choosing from Tires, Gears, Engine, Suspension and Brakes. The idea is that you choose more of the items that will wear out the most over the duration of the entire race, but you should select at least one of each type so you aren't left without any backup parts in case something goes wrong. If a part does break during the race, and you don't have any replacements, its game over.

The race then begins similar to most racing games. You immediately realize you have to manually shift between four different gears, and in order to get the best time you need to keep track of curves and hills to try and go the optimal speed. Take a curve or hill too fast and you'll end up slowing down, and possibly damaging your car parts (or simply ending up upside down). 

Honestly I like this game but I REALLY suck at all of the added complexity. I wish I could just enjoy the good graphics and jamming music without worrying about all the other stuff. But I can 100% appreciate how it differentiated itself from the other racing games at the time. 

You can watch my first several runs on YouTube:

Overall I did enjoy playing Victory Run, and if I had gotten it as a kid, I probably would have spent a lot of time trying to learn the courses and how to best balance my car's performance. 

As it stands, it would simply take too much time for me to get good at this game, and I have other TurboGrafx-16 games I'm eager to move onto, like...

My next game is The Legendary Axe, probably the highest regarded of the TurboGrafx-16 launch games. In this case, I purposely left the best for last, and I can't wait to get into it.

Until next time...