Racing Destruction Set

Electronic Arts ran a whole line of Construction Set titles in the mid-eighties, and Racing Destruction Set from 1985 belongs squarely to it. Alongside the racing itself, the package includes a track editor: you assemble a course from pieces, place obstacles along it, and then drive what you built. That approach, where the publisher supplies the tools and the player supplies the content, was characteristic of EA at the time and worked especially well on the Commodore 64.

Racing is viewed from above, with several vehicle types that handle differently, from light bikes up to heavier machines. Destructive elements are part of the design, since hazards can be dropped onto the course to slow or wreck an opponent. The most interesting variable is gravity, which can be set to different values, so the same layout behaves completely differently: jumps stretch out, grip falls away, and steering becomes looser and harder to correct.

The game is at its best with two people, because racing another human on shared controls sustains tension better than the computer opposition ever does. The graphics are plain and functional, and the handling is direct but carries real momentum, so each vehicle needs a few laps of familiarisation before you can commit to a line.

The editor is the reason this one has aged well. You manufacture your own content, which means the game does not exhaust itself the way a fixed set of courses would. It runs here directly in the browser with nothing to install, so building your first track is a matter of a few minutes.