How to play Demolition Herby online
- Drive Herby: arrow keys
- Overdrive: Space bar
- Start a game or the next lap: Space bar (the joystick button)
- Choose a game variation: F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Second player, controlling the chase cars: T/F/G/H
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
The difficulty switches have no effect in this game.
Gameplay
Herby starts at the top of the screen and can drive anywhere along the lines of the grid. Every line he drives over turns from white to red, and when all four sides of a square are red, the square is blacked out, earning you points and extra fuel. Black out every square and you complete a lap. The next lap starts with faster, smarter opponents.
The chase cars turn your red lines back to white and try to crash into you head-on, which knocks Herby off the track and costs a car. Hit them from behind, though, and they are the ones knocked out for a few seconds, and you score points. A chase car on the same line as Herby moves twice as fast. Your fuel gauge at the bottom of the screen is the other danger: a tune warns you when it is nearly empty, and running dry also costs a car. Overdrive makes Herby much faster but burns fuel quickly, and it stops him painting lines unless all the chase cars are off the track. You start with three spare cars, get another every 1,000 points (up to six), and the game ends when the last one is gone.
| Action | Points |
|---|---|
| Black out one square | 32, plus fuel |
| Black out two squares with one line | 145, plus more fuel |
| Ram a chase car from behind | 117 |
Game variations
- Game 1, Children’s Race: slow chase cars, and the speed never changes.
- Game 2, Beginner’s Course: starts slowly and gets faster every lap. After seven laps the chase cars stop erasing your lines and just hunt you.
- Game 3, Dastardly Derby: fast from the start, and after two laps the chase cars only chase you.
Tips
- Finish two squares at once. A line shared by two nearly finished squares is worth far more than closing them one at a time.
- Clear the track, then floor it. Ram all three chase cars from behind and you can use overdrive and still paint lines until they come back.
- Move away after a hit. A rammed chase car bounces off, so don’t sit where it lands.
History
Telesys put out only a handful of 2600 cartridges, including Coconuts, Cosmic Creeps, Fast Food and Ram It, before it went under in the video game crash of 1983, and its games ended up in bargain bins. Don Ruffcorn also programmed Cosmic Creeps. The manual has a nice extra: a table giving each chase car’s “IQ” and speed on every level: the IQ ranges from 25 to 90 and the speed from 25 to 95. Herby’s speed is listed as 100, and the designers explain that no chase car ever reaches a perfect IQ of 100 because they wanted the computer to stay at least a little human.
