Verkeersrally

educational driving game for Commodore 64, 1985

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Use Control Port 2.

In this game you are a car driver who sets out on a mission to find a couple
of transmitters scattered around the city within a certain time limit and
while doing so, Verkeersrally will teach you some basic traffic rules along
the way.

You start your quest at some random point within the city and the first thing
you’ll notice is the immense size of the city map. Just driving around and
trusting on your luck to find a transmitter would be like finding a needle in
a haystack, so there are some things, which can help you to find them:

Signal signs: scattered around the landscape are some signs with an arrow on
them, which is pointing in the general direction of the transmitter. This
only lets you know the direction in which you should travel, but it doesn’t
tell you how far. For this there are:

Sonars: in some neighbourhoods you will find a sonar-house. When you enter
these, the sonar will determine the distance between you and the transmitter,
so you’ll know if you’re virtually on top of it or if you’ve still got to
burn more rubber.

Puzzles: you can also find puzzle-houses, in which you will find a picture of
the direct surroundings of the transmitter. Maybe you’ll recognize a building
or another landmark which you have seen before or you can look for a:

District map: which shows you a map of a huge part of the city on which you
can look for the little puzzle peace you’ve seen in the puzzle-house. 

Whoever thinks this game is just a matter of racing around the city and
finding some transmitters is wrong. You are one of the participants in the
city traffic, so you should drive your car in a responsible and safe matter!
Breaking the traffic rules will cause time-penalties. For example, causing an
accident will cost you 30 penalty seconds, driving on the wrong side of the
road will set you back 40 seconds and driving through a red light will cost
you a whopping 50 seconds, so beware! And since Verkeersrally is a Dutch
game, you should drive on the right side of the road. For those living in a
country where driving left is a normality, the game Traffix will let you do
that.

And there’s more to take into account. This game being so incredibly
realistic, driving your car through a huge city will consume petrol. So once
in a while you will have to fill up your supercar, so you can continue your
quest.

While driving through the city you will be asked to answer a traffic related
question at some random points. This question will always show a traffic
situation with some vehicles, having you to click on the vehicle, which has
the right of way. This is the educational part of the game, which will teach
mainly the younger player (although, I hope so anyway) something about
participating in daily traffic. 

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Some useful keyboard shortcuts
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       [PAUSE] - stop/continue game
          [F9] - quick load game state
         [F12] - quick save game state (still stored after leaving the site)
         [F10] - toggle performance meter
         [F11] - toggle fullscreen mode
  [ScrollLock] - quick switch control ports
    [PageDown] - make a screenshot (320x200)