LCD Racer (Vircon32)

About the game

LCD Racer imitates the cheap electronic handhelds of the 1980s, the ones with a single fixed screen where the cars were printed in advance and only lit up when it was their turn. Your car sits at the bottom of a road with three lanes, and rows of cars come down toward you one step at a time. Move one lane to the left or to the right to slip through the gaps. Hit a car and the screen flashes; the third hit ends the game.

Every car that goes past you is worth ten points, and every hundred points make the traffic step a little faster, until it moves almost four times as fast as at the start. The score is shown at the top of the road, the best score next to it, and the crosses mark the lives you have lost. The best score is saved in the memory card of the console.

The game was written by joyrider3774 (Willems Davy), first for a small retro-games competition more than a decade ago, then ported to the GP2X, the Playdate and now the Vircon32. In the original the game was called Formula 1; since that name belongs to somebody else, here it is LCD Racer, with a new background and new sound effects.

Playing it here

Vircon32 is an open fantasy console, a 32-bit machine designed from scratch with a 640×360 screen, and this game runs in its official emulator compiled for the browser. Click Play. After a short credits screen the cars on the road flash in the intro; press X, Z or an arrow key to start. The game over screen waits for the same keys to start again. F2 saves the emulator state and F4 loads it.

Controls

On a phone or tablet the console buttons appear on screen, around the picture.

Tips

Read two rows ahead. The cars only move when the clock ticks, so you can plan a lane change before the row reaches you.

Stay in the middle. From the middle lane you can reach either side in one move, which gives you more ways out.

Do not rush the first hundred points. The speed only goes up after every hundred points, so use the slow start to learn the rhythm.

Credits and licence

LCD Racer is by Davy (joyrider3774) and is under the MIT License. The name, the sound effects and the background are ours: the original sounds, by Luca Antignano, are not licensed for commercial use, and the handheld picture could not be traced to its source. We build the cartridge ourselves from the author's source, with our changes, using the official Vircon32 tools; the licence text and the exact source are linked from this page.