American Truck
Released in 1985 on the PC-88, MSX and Sharp X1 and one year later on the PC-98, by Telenet Japan, American Truck is a game about being an American Truck driver driving an American Truck through America.
The gameplay of American Truck is simple, you control a large truck driving down a long American highway, violently crashing into any vehicles — whether they be carpools or firetrucks — that would dare hinder your path at a high velocity, bouncing them towards the side of the road where they will then violently explode, killing whoever is inside. You need to avoid the side of the road, or else you’ll slow to a crawl, failing your all-important delivery.
Along the way, you’ll encounter many obstacles, not only the winding roads, but splits that will grind your truck to a halt if you drive over them, forcing you to keep track of the message monitor on your hud for periodic warnings on what kind of obstacle you’re heading towards. It is the most important part of any american trucker’s toolset.
There’s not too much need to worry, if you should accidentally lose a truck. The four regimented parts of your trip meter give you three marked checkpoints on each level, allowing you to continue so long as you have more trucks left.
Finally, at the end of your road, you’ve completed your order. It was difficult. You went through a lot. You’d want to just kick back and get some rest, wouldn’t you?
But an American Trucker’s life isn’t so easy. After one order, it’s right on to the next one. Every day, you must risk your life not even once, but many times. This is what it takes to live the life of an American Trucker. Forever driving down roads so similar they all seem to blend into one another.
One thing I like about the game is that if you set your monitor incorrectly, it displays in this weird neon-blue hellscape. Combined with running the game at double speed on an 8hz cpu, it’s kinda trippy.
There’s also an MSX version of American Truck, there are some interesting differences between the two.
Most immediately, compared to the PC-88 title screen, which has a very soft animated image of a beach next to the title, the MSX version has a fancy animation of the title itself.
The game itself also has much brighter, poppier colors than the PC-88 version, and generally feels smoother to play, though the titular american truck is much slower to move around.
The most important difference, though, is level design. While the PC-88 version was somewhat barren outside of other cars and splits in the road, the MSX version has pits that stop you in your tracks, and gold coins that give you points, usually placed dangerously close to pits. This… gives the game a bit more depth, I guess?
On the other hand, I don’t think the MSX version has a credits screen, compared to the PC-88 version which pops one up whenever you get a game over. That kinda sucks, they seem like they might’ve had different staff.
Ultimately, American Truck is not a super memorable game for its gameplay. But it’s a game near and dear to my heart because it makes me laugh whenever I think of the fact that there’s an old japanese pc game called American Truck, that plays like some kind of weird road warrior game with less post-apocalyptic themes and more people on a modern american highway just randomly crashing to death for no reason.
Producer Chuichi Fukushima went on to direct the NES version of the first game in the moderately popular Valis: The Fantasm Soldier series of action platformers, as well as do game design on Digital Devil Monogatari: Megami Tensei, the first entry in the Megami Tensei franchise.
Programmer Masami Hanari ended up working on a ton of games, including producing several entries in the Cosmic Fantasy series of JRPGs, and both directing and doing programming work for Valis II, III and IV.
Musician Nobuhito Koise later did music for the JRPG Emerald Dragon, as well as doing sound engineering on the top-down X68000 shooter, Die Bahnwelt.
Appearing in the special thanks, Hiroyuki Kuwata is notable as his later credits include work on games like Seiken Densetsu 3, Kingdom Hearts II, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D and Ever Oasis.
Almost everyone is also listed in the special thanks for the shooting game ANDOROGYNUS, which I feel like I kind of have to give a mention, because that game has one of the most bizarre premises I’ve ever read.
It’s a scrolling shooter starring an incredible robot with the power to change their gender at will, which of course happens halfway through the game, turning them from a big metal robot thing into a woman in a metal bikini.
So, I’m glad the developers of American Truck helped us get one of the first genderfluid game protagonists? It’s more of a funny curiosity than anything, given the game seems to have a very, uh, 80s understanding of gender, but it’s interesting.
Most of these posts were supported by my Patreon, but I’m unlaunching it a few days after I post this due to a lack of interest and a lack of personal need for it. I’ll still post write-ups on games in the future when I want to, but unless I ever decide to put my Patreon back out there, writing these won’t be for any monetary incentive.
