Badlands (1989)

Following on from earlier top-down racer titles Super Sprint & Championship Sprint (both 1986), the gameplay of Atari’s Badlands will be immediately familiar to anyone who has played those titles, or anything like R.C. Pro Am on the NES or Micro Machines. Taking the Sprint series’ simple racing concept, Badlands adds in a post-apocalyptic setting and a host of weapons.  The bigger sprites and better graphics sees a trade off with a reduction down from 4 to just 2-player simultaneous gameplay, but despite never attaining quite as much recognition as other games in the genre, it remains riotous fun with a couple of mates!