Atari has been re-releasing a number of their vintage franchises over the past few years. Lunar Lander, Berserk, Missile Command and Yars have all made recent appearances on modern consoles and PCs. At this point, it seems likely that the entire original Atari library will be re-envisioned or at least most of the key titles. Confirming that fact is the release of NeoSprint from developer Headless Chicken Games and publisher Atari, a new twist on a very old classic racing game.
The original Sprint game from Atari was made in 1977, followed by two sequels, Super Sprint and Championship Sprint, both in 1986. Super Sprint was also released as Sprintmaster on the Atari 2600 and has been released on the occasional vintage collection for various consoles. Now Atari has decided to release NeoSprint, an updated version of Super Sprint and Championship Sprint which is attempting to bring classic racing gaming back to modern hardware.
NeoSprint has the basic structure of the other game in the series. Drive around a series of set tracks, whipping through turns and screeching your way to victory. Unlike the original arcade games, you’ll be using a controller these days, but the core premise is the same. There are several modes of gameplay but we’ll start with Campaign Mode, the core of the game. In Campaign Mode, you’ll play through a series of races. Each set of four races contains three with a total of four cars racing including yourself and a final versus race where you try to best the expert at each track. More cars and additional obstacles and track variations are added as you play and with eight rivals to unlock, there’s a fair amount of content here.
Campaign mode is where you’ll learn the basics of controlling cars in NeoSprint and you’ll have to pay attention because one of the first things you’ll notice is how non-intuitive gameplay is. There are several levels of steering control available in the game and you’ll have to select each before you really have an understanding of how they work. This option is somewhat hidden in the car selection menu but hitting the Y button temporarily brings up a menu allowing you to select low, medium, or high steering sensitivity. Each comes with its own issues. Low makes your car handle like you are steering through mud. High is so sensitive that you’ll end up waggling all over the track and medium is somewhere in between and probably the easiest to start with.
The visual approach to this new version of Sprint is an isometric perspective. This adjustment makes the cars seem more realistic than the original design of Sprint and Super Sprint, but depending on the camera perspective you choose, can make it more difficult to see the track itself. There are two options for camera views, one called Focus on Car which follows your car and another called Focus on Track which allows you to view the whole track at once. Choosing a view is very much a matter of preference as both are equally effective. The main disadvantage of track view is that your car is particularly small, making it difficult to distinguish cars or even see where you’re going. There is an option to highlight your car around the track but it’s remarkably irritating and makes the game look even less realistic with hard red lines ensconcing your vehicle. Zooming in closer makes it much easier to plan cornering, but it’s challenging to see upcoming turns as looking away from the race to check corners can cause you to drift off course and the car highlighting looks even worse close up. Hitting corners or slowing down can lose your lead quickly, so ensuring you know what turns are coming and position yourself effectively is integral to success in NeoSprint.
Cornering is probably the most important part of gameplay. Unlike other racing games, taking corners too fast in NeoSprint can result in your car flipping over or getting knocked entirely off the course. While games like Mario Kart allow you to drift easily through tough turns, Neo Sprint takes the opposite approach, forcing you to use a combination of braking and handbrake drifting in order to make corners effectively. Hitting other cars also has significant effect on the game’s physics, dropping your speed and knocking cars around like a destruction derby. No damage ever shows on any of the cars but they can be knocked on their sides or backs easily. There’s a dedicated button for putting your car back on the track as well, but hitting it mid race will instantly stop your car and shift it back to the center of the track, occasionally losing your lead.
The Switch keybinds are particularly problematic as the track center is set to X and the handbrake (which you’ll use frequently) is set to Y, resulting in an awkward attempt to hold the accelerator down with A while hitting Y and accidentally hitting X, stopping your car dead and re-centering it on the track. Realistically, this should only work when you go off the track, but instead it ends up with a slight button slip losing races. Fortunately, the handbrake button is also bound to the R button, allowing you to drive and corner more easily, but it is not presented as a control option in tutorials, which is odd. The game would honestly probably be easier to control with a steering wheel but as it is, simply moving left and right on the analog stick feels muddy and unresponsive and combined with the mapping, ends up a frustrating endeavor.
Bad controller mapping is the least of the issues which NeoSprint faces however. Your choice of cars significantly effects how well you can complete races and to succeed, you’ll be forced to switch cars from area to area. That’s not problematic in itself, but the relative stats of the individual cars available are not particularly clear on what cars will work best on what tracks. Other than the early tracks, the remainder of the game is absolutely loaded with ridiculously sharp corners, weird jumps, and sudden drops that easily send your car flying off the track. Grab something that doesn’t corner well enough or accelerates too slowly and there’s no way you’ll keep up.
There are nine different cars available from the start in Neo Sprint. They have limited stat bars which show speed, acceleration, and handling, but nothing more detailed. Unlike other racing game, you can’t change out tires and other parts to trick out your cars, but you can switch up your drivers and change the paint colors. There are a ton of additional unlockable skins for cars as well, many of which feature classic Atari color schemes and logos. All cars feature very basic overall designs and a lack of attention to detail that’s surprising given that other racing games such as Hot Wheels Unleashed (review here) have set high design standards. Of course, the much lower $25 price point makes some of that forgiveable, but there are still some surprising design limitations here.
Before we go deeper into that, let’s look at the other modes available in NeoSprint. Beside Campaign Mode, you can play Grand Prix mode which lets you mix and match courses to make your own race circuits using both unlocked courses and any you choose to create. It’s not as deep as Campaign Mode, but it does let you play the races you prefer in the order you’d like and that can be fun. We didn’t spend all that much time on Grand Prix mode but it’s a neat way to extend the life of the game.
There are also Time Trials and Obstacle Courses modes available in NeoSprint. Time Trials provide a ghost car that you are expected to beat to get the best times. It’s pretty straightforward and there’s really nothing else to the mode but if you’re trying to refine your technique without getting bashed constantly by other racers. Obstacle Courses are more of an exercise in frustration than a new mode that’s fun and offbeat. Cones, puddles, and other detritus are placed around the courses, forcing you to navigate around them, trying to beat a timer. This rapidly turns into an exercise in precision frustration as you’ll need to accelerate and hold speeds while dodging around each obstacle. Unfortunately, with the minute corrections required to dodge obstacles, your car slows down quickly and it’s a struggle to conquer even the easiest courses. For players that love precise, detailed mastery of racing courses, there might be some appeal here, but for most players, Obstacle Courses will just be frustrating.
Finally there’s the track builder. This mode lets you build your own tracks in any of the games terrains with any of the parts available. There’s a basic tutorial and then the game is all yours to build as you see fit. Unfortunately, the controls aren’t particularly intuitive and building tracks quickly becomes a chore rather than a pleasure. While the idea is great, the execution is clearly lacking and that’s a shame because making tracks is probably a lot better than the ones in Campaign mode with their bizarre turns and weird angles.
While the basic designs and vintage logos in NeoSprint are definitely cool, the overall visual design of the game is surprisingly weak. Due to the camera angles required to see the course, cars are absolutely miniscule and it’s difficult to make out more than moving dots that make engine noises in course view. Zooming the view in to follow mode so that the camera follows you around the track is definitely better, but detail levels of cars are shockingly low, with no decals visible and just basic 3D cars with some of the paint details are showing.
Honestly, the visuals here wouldn’t have been out of place in the ‘90s and while this is a retro revival, there’s no reason it shouldn’t look good as well. As it stands however, the focus is on the course itself and not the cars, which lead to busy backgrounds that are distracting while playing through courses that are difficult to drive at best. Courses have lots of detail but looking away at anything interesting for more than an instant will almost guarantee that you will crash or make some sort of mistake, losing your race and even if you do, the detail isn’t as impressive as it could be. Challenger portraits also look poorly drawn and feel like something out of a low-budget indie game. Between the simplistic cars, the busy environments, and the silly challengers, the visuals in NeoSprint definitely leave something to be desired.
The screeching tires and beeping lights you’d expect from a standard racing game are here of course. NeoSprint definitely sounds like a racing game, but just like in other areas, it isn’t the most impressive. The screeching tires seem out of place with how slow your car is moving and the crashing sounds lose their impact when you can’t see any damage or broken pieces anywhere, only a car that looks remarkably unrealistic when it is awkwardly knocked over. While the sounds sort of match up, they don’t feel as immersive as they should and for a game this removed from standard racing designs, the effect is one that further distances the player from gameplay and immersion. The soundtrack doesn’t help much either, with simplistic synthesizer loops that slowly become more irritating the longer you play.
NeoSprint is an attempt to bring back the fun, slot car style of racing games that dominated early video gaming. Unfortunately, it’s plagued by control issues, weak visuals and music, and frustrating mechanics. The track builder has potential but even that is particularly frustrating to use with a controller. These issues ruin the enjoyment of what should be a simplistic game with some clever updates like we’ve seen with other Atari remakes. Only the most dedicated players or obsessed racing fanatics are going to have enough patience to really get their money’s worth out of NeoSprint. The rest of us are better off avoiding it altogether or if you’re still curious, picking it up on a discount sale.
This review is based on a digital copy of NeoSprint provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. NeoSprint is also available for Playstation 4/5, Xbox, the Atari VCS (assuming you have one), and PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.
