[MAME Monday] Make Trax

 

INSERT COIN – Credit(s) 0001

Phew, I’ve almost risked not being in time for the debut of this new column. Was harder than I thought to record a game from MAME, I had to set a lot of parameters and use some tricks but finally here we are!

This review will be a bit different from the others, being MAME Monday a section dedicated mainly to re-discover some old games otherwise destined to the eternal oblivion. I won’t focus on all the parameters I usually evaluate but I will only give a brief description of the featured title, and obviously an unavoidable video of me playing it, the 1-Minute MAME Mini Movie! (too many “M”s, I know…)

The first game featured in MAME Monday column is the first game I ever played when I discovered MAME for the first time. There were so many games to choose that I had to pick a random one. And the result was Make Trax, a game I’ve never heard about before.

Relased in 1981 under the name of Crush Roller for the japanese and european markets on upright and cocktail cabinets, in this maze game, that inherit Pac-Man style, the main character is…a brush that has to paint all the layout to pass to the next level. All the levels are identical and the only thing that change is the speed of the enemies, two fishes, one blue, one yellow. The two fishes can be temporarily killed (as in Pac-Man) with a roller that our brush can “activate” by just passing on it.

The most beautiful thing about this game is the hyper-bright color of the paint we see on the track that resembles a marker, especially in the first and third level where we can see the brush panting in green and yellow.

Without overthinking about the crazy mind who gave birth to this rambling idea (a paint against two walking fishes), our protagonist is not alone on the screen but there are alternatively a cat, a bird, a mouse and…a man driving a car (!) than come out of thieir quarters and invades the layout leaving on it their footsteps that our brush has to clean immediately (eventually killing the invader by hitting him).

In the original arcade game you had 3 credits to spend but fortunately in the MAME version you can add all the coins you want by only pressing a key (life’s easy with MAME…).

Make Trax has also a 2.0 version, called Make Trax Turbo in which on the layout can appear a speed-up chip allowing the brush to move faster. Originally released on coin-op machines, Make Trax has been later ported on Famicom and Neo Geo Pocket Color, but the true, authentical version will always be this upright one

…or the cocktail, if you want

Here are some screenshots of the game

Final score 70/100

A huge thanks to the guys of Arcade Museum.

---

Year: 1981

Developer: Alpha Denshi

Publisher: Kural Samno (J), Williams (NA), Karateko/Exidy (EU)

Genre: Maze

Games Mode: Single Player, Two Players alternate

Original Platform: Arcade

Cabinet: Upright, Cocktail

Inspired to:

• Pac-Man (1980)

If you liked this game you can also try:

• Head On (1979)
• Pulsar (1981)

Follow I Old Games on Facebook!