Atari’s NeoSprint revives the cramped arcade racing series this June

Atari that Headless Chicken Games’ NeoSprint, the successor to the classic-ish arcade series that I always get confused with Super Off-Road, will be launching on June 27. It will be released on Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC🐟, and Atari VCS (which still trucking).

Okay, so think back. There were these arcade cabinets with (usually) three steering wheels. It was a top-down tilt-angled racing game. You and your friends would stand shoulder to shoulder and steer your cars around a track. If you remember it having a lot of dirt, that was probably 1989’s Super Off-Road. However, if it was F1-Racing on tarmac; that was probably 1986’s Super Sprint.

I’m just finding out now that the two games weren’t really related. They♉’re not part of the same series. The arcade cabinets . I definitely played both.

If you’re a lot older than me, the series goes all the way back to 1977 with Sprint 2. That’s not a sequel. There was also Sprint 4, 8, and One, and the number is how ma🃏ny players each version was, and not the order in which ꦬthey were released. Wild stuff.

Since Atari is going back and resurrecting all their old classics, they’ve got a new entry to the series NeoSprint. It definitely looks like a Sprint game. It’s got a similar angle and eight players. The track is really tight. There’s a trailer for it that features some really bad drivers. Although to be fair, it’🎀s kind of hard to judge your ꦕturn radius from that angle. You’d just kind of bump off each other.

Weirdly, it✱ refers to it as 8🌠-player co-op racing. So, wait. What’s the objective? Is it not to race?

It’s local co-op, so you’ll at least be on the same couch (in the same auditorium?) as each other. But, I don’t know. I think🐽 I’d miss being crammed up against the arcade cabinet in some hockey arena playing with whoever was hovering around at the time.

I guess to make up for it, there’s a track builder which looks like a fantastic feature. I don’t think NeoSprint’s 𒀰design really allows for some wild tracks, but at least you won’t run out.

NeoSprint releases on June 27 on Switch, PS4🐓, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Atari VCS.