Vette!

Vette! is a 1989 racing video game where the object is racing a Chevrolet Corvette through the streets of San Francisco. The game was notable for its (at the time) detailed un-shaded polygon rendering of San Francisco streets. It was released on three floppy disks with a Black & White or Color version available. It was also released with a large instruction manual that gave detailed specs about the cars and details about various areas in the city.

Vette!
Cover art
Developer(s)Sphere
Publisher(s)Spectrum HoloByte
Producer(s)Joe Scirica
Designer(s)Dan Geisler
Gilman Louie
Programmer(s)Dan Geisler
Jinda Pan
Sky Chang
Joe Tretinik
Kus Pranawahadi
Erick Jap
Artist(s)Dan Guerra
Matt Carlstrom
Jody Sather
Composer(s)Jinda Pan
Platform(s)MS-DOS, Macintosh, NEC PC-9801
Release
  • NA: October 1989
Genre(s)Racing
Mode(s)Single-player, Two-player (null-modem for MS-DOS, AppleTalk for Macintosh)

The game features a 3D rendered San Francisco, including the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco Bay Bridge,[1] and Lombard Street, known as the "Crookedest Street In The U.S."

Features
  • Car damage that affected the car's engine and handling.
  • Full control over the game's camera views, including interior cam with full working dashboard
  • The presence and interaction of law enforcement, in which you get pulled over and must give an excuse as to your erratic driving.
  • The ability to drive anywhere within the accurately modeled city, including highways, tunnels, and bridges
  • Pulling over at the various gas stations repairs the car.
  • The player is able to run people over.
  • Driving erratically can attract the attention of a nearby cop to give chase. Then getting pulled over there are 8 excuses to choose from unless charged for vehicular homicide, by running over at least 1 pedestrian during the chase, or within close proximity of a cop.

Copy protection

At the beginning of the game, a question from the manual requires a correct answer to prove game ownership. If the question is falsely answered, the game can be played for a limited time before a window popped up claiming, "You are Driving a Stolen Vette" and the game crashes.

Reception

Tony Dillon of ACE praised Vette! for its "complexity of design combined with clever simplicity in presentation" and its varied gameplay, and opined that the game "doesn't quite have the edge over Stunt Car, but it sure isn't far behind."[2] Peter Scisco of Compute! favorably reviewed the game, describing it as "Falcon AT on the ground". He praised the game's detail and EGA graphics, only criticizing the lack of sound card support, and concluded that "Vette! surpasses other driving simulations in its scope and realism".[1]

gollark: Well, it *opens*.
gollark: Yes, I work for a secret organization trying to keep REAL physics from the world so that people can be OPPRESSED by GRAVITY and ELECTRONS.
gollark: Also the "electric universe" thing seems to contradict half of physics and cannot, thus, be supported by it.
gollark: I don't think you know how this works.
gollark: If being a normie means actually knowing correct physicsy things, then sure, that seems fine?

References
  1. Scisco, Peter (November 1989). "Vette!". Compute!. pp. 84–86.
  2. Dillon, Tony (November 1989). "Screentest: Vette!". ACE. p. 50.
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