Double Axle

Taito built a lot of racing cabinets around 1991 and most of them put you in something sleek. Double Axle puts you in a monster truck. The Japanese release, Power Wheels, is a measurably different game: it runs on a ninety-second countdown with lap targets, while the North American Double Axle scores you on finishing position and lets you spend winnings on the truck between events.

That upgrade loop is what holds the American version together. Three sprint races, each demanding a third-place finish or better on pain of game over, with prize money awarded by placement and a bonus stage after each race to top up the balance. Between races you buy a bigger engine, bigger tyres, nitro boosters. The later tracks are tuned on the assumption you bought them, so treating upgrades as optional is a fast route back to the continue screen.

The three courses are distinct enough to be worth naming. The cross-country run crosses rivers and climbs through forest and mountain, with an erupting volcano dropping rocks in the US build. The mud-bog stage is rock mazes and deep mud, with a mid-race fork that makes you choose between a canyon jump and driving through a tornado. The icy road is the hard one — ice blocks, a cavern full of stalagmites and a blizzard-blown summit. A demolition derby closes the game: nine rivals, two minutes.

It runs on Taito Z System hardware, which means scaled sprites rather than polygons, and the sense of speed still works. The handling does not translate as cleanly. This was built around a real wheel with real resistance, and on a keyboard the truck is either turning fully or not turning at all. You can start it straight away in the browser, which is the quickest way to find out whether that bothers you — budget the first few runs for fighting the controls rather than the field.

As a curio in Taito's racing catalogue it is worth twenty minutes. As a game it is exactly what arcade racers of the period were designed to be: short, steep and engineered to take your money.