Nearly a year before Namco brought that game with the yellow pie-thing to American shores, Exidy, the Rodney Dangerfield of the arcade gaming industry, brought us lucky Americans a remarkably similar little experience by the name of "Side Track". While it would be tempting to turn this write-up into a red-faced distribe bemoaning the ignorance of the average consumer, temptation is thwarted by the fact that, unlike Namco's pie-thing, Side Track isn't very fun. The trouble comes not from the dated presentation per se, but rather from a rather oddball learning curve (no doubt at least partially the result of aforementioned datedness) that the modern videogaming consciousness is ill-adapted to conquer.
Much like that other game, in Side Track you navigate around a maze of sorts collecting static tokens and avoiding something with no soul. Unfortuantely, the maze isn't very well-defined - instead of lines designating walls, in this game they designate the path upon which you move. This may seem to be a tiny change, but in today's wall-oriented society, this role-reversal can dictate the difference twixt a successful, future-conscious gamer and a pathetic display of button mashing and chaotic random guesses. Additionally, these lines - like the railroad track they simulate - can change orientation, and this can result in a frustrating experience for the gamer who was
so sure that if he merely held the joystick in the neutral position, he would be safe from the rampaging marauder on the lower track.
As your train completes a circuit, it grows a car - which, while bestowing a point increase, also makes it much easier for your train to be rammed by the evil train whose path is not always predictable. This makes the coveted "inner circle" of passengers rather risky to enter, especially when your train is almost as long as the circuit itself. To make matters worse, your train seems to "grow" as it switches direction (a result of the train-car sprites having only two orientations - vertical and horizontal, with no diagonal), turning what the mind would consider a harrowing but ultimately safe turn of directions into a frightful collision.
The field of maze games is thicker than the skull of a die-hard Sonic apologist, and in this field it makes little sense to waste time with a game such as this. If one is truly desiring of the Side Track experience, they should be advised to switch their display to black and white, throw water on a speaker, and play Pac-Man while simulating Parkinson's and avoiding the power pills. Not only are there better maze games, but there are better Exidy games - games which could perhaps even inspire a "no respect" rant.
