Continental Circus
A 1987 Taito racing game with 3D glasses.
Continental Circus is a racing arcade video game developed and published by Taito in 1987. It was promoted as the world's first three dimensional racing simulation, using shutter-type 3D glasses in its arcade cabinets. Home conversions released by Virgin Games in 1989 lacked the 3D effect and special glasses.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Taito
- Composer
- Zuntata
- Platforms
- Arcade
- Amiga
- Amstrad CPC
- Atari ST
- Commodore 64
- MSX
- ZX Spectrum
- Genre
- Racing
- Modes
- Single-player
- Arcade system
- Taito Z System
Facts from the source article.
Gameplay
The player drives the 1987 Camel-sponsored Honda/Lotus 99T Formula One car, as driven by Ayrton Senna and Satoru Nakajima. Sponsor names are intentionally misspelled to avoid copyright infringement under Japanese law. To win, the player must qualify in eight different races. Initially, finishing 80th or better is required to advance; the qualifying threshold rises as the player progresses. Failing to qualify or running out of time ends the game, though a continue option is available except after the final race. Car contact with other cars or scenery triggers a pit call; if the car smokes too long, an "IMPENDING EXPLOSION" message appears, and failure to reach the pits or another hit causes a crash or explosion costing seconds. Exceeding 380 km/h turns the speedometer yellow as a warning. Rear-ending another car causes a cartwheel and explosion. Excessive speed in turns causes loss of grip and spinouts, with a low chance of wreck. Thunderstorms wet the track, triggering a "CHANGE TIRES" message and requiring a pit stop for wet tyres; puddles after a storm are not a threat.
Audio
The arcade version has no music during races but plays intro and outro music for each race, similar to Pole Position. A voice announces "Gentlemen, start your engines! 30 seconds before the start!"—a line taken from a 1972 French documentary of the same name. The music, sound effects, and voice clips appear on the compilation soundtrack "究極TIGER -G.S.M.TAITO 2-". Zuntata, Taito's house band, composed the arcade score; Ben Daglish composed the music for home versions.
Reception
Continental Circus turned a tidy profit. Its arcade pre-orders beat Taito's earlier hit Operation Wolf. In Japan, Game Machine ranked it the third top-earning upright arcade cabinet for April 1988. Across the UK, it climbed to second place on the Coinslot dedicated arcade chart that year, trailing only Street Fighter. Sinclair User handed it the 1988 "Cock-Up of the Year" award, since the title seemed to misspell "circuit." When ported to home systems, it hit number two on the UK sales chart, again behind Sega's Power Drift.
More in Taito Games of the 1980s
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