Paris-Dakar

The third racing game I watched someone smarter than me play back in the nineties. Paris-Dakar from Microprose is a tribute to the legendary rally — not by simulating it realistically, but by at least attempting to capture its spirit.

You sit down at your computer with the ambition to drive those six thousand kilometers from Paris to Dakar. It's not a sim in the modern sense of the word — rather, it's a mix of arcade racing and strategy game. You drive your car through procedurally generated desert tracks, but you spend plenty of time in menus managing fuel, tires, repairs, and provisions. One miscalculation and your car gets stuck somewhere in the Saharan dunes while the team waits for evacuation.

The driving itself is straightforward. You control the vehicle from a top-down view through plenty of colorless pixels that try to look like a mountainous desert. The graphics are characteristically cheap for the period — cars look like domino tiles. Sound? A monotonous engine buzz and menu clicks. But here's the thing: when you run out of gas or blow a tire during a stage, you don't handle it through refined simulation. It all comes down to strategy when planning at camp and your willingness to take risks. Everything hinges on how you manage your resources at bivouac.

In 1988, it was an interesting idea. Other racing games drove you around the same track over and over and measured your times. Here you came home marked by sand and worn down. Each stage carried its own weight. Today it's tough to play though — it's neither a sim with the pleasure of driving nor an elegant enough puzzle. The physical limitations cripple it: the graphics hurt your eyes and the game attempts something that more modern hardware could handle with greater elegance.

Who should try it? Rally and strategy fans from the old days who don't mind scribbles on screen and who enjoy games that attempt something unconventional. With an emulator you can handle it today without a fight. Just prepare your patience — computer opponents who play by their own rules won't let you off easy.