Ball Race

Ball Race is a video game in the strategy genre originally released in 1988. It is currently playable on DOS.

Ball Race is a unique racing game by Carl McLawhorn, most famous for his multiplayer Trek game from the early 1980s.

The game basically allows you to race a ball (which looks like a billiard ball) against the computer or another human player. The game is played from a top-down perspective that displays the racetrack and vital stats, such as how much energy level you have, how many laps you've done, whether or not your shields are up, etc. To make things more interesting, there are up to 50 more balls that are not part of the race, which you must avoid or hit in some cases during the game. The effect of hitting one of these balls is similar to hitting two billiard balls, and the physics of the balls are reasonably modeled in the game.

There are a few power-ups you can collect during a run, my favorite being the 'Alice's Mushroom', which shrinks your ball (the game ball, of course ;)) for a brief period of time. Shields will allow you to blow up all the normal balls, but they drain your energy. You can also throw mines once you collect them. There are other useful options not often seen even in typical racing games, such as the ability to set a cruising speed, as well as different difficulty levels (which determine how fast you can accelerate and the responsiveness of your left-right movement).

With a unique premise and solid execution, including reasonably realistic ball physics, Ball Race is one of the best early free games popular with BBS'ers. thumbs up!

Note: This is version 1. 0 of the game, in which the designer promised more features in later versions. If anyone has the 'final version' of this old game, let me know.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.