Remembering classic games: Vette! (1989)

If we were to describe an upcoming driving game that featured a huge open world recreation of San Francisco, traffic to avoid, a realistic damage model that affected engine performance and handling, police chases, an interior view with accurately modelled dashboard and both single and multiplayer modes, you might very reasonably ask where you can place a preorder.

Staggeringly, this is all stuff Vette! was doing back in 1989. Yes, the same year as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Truly justifying the exclamation mark in its title, Vette! was an astonishing achievement for the time. Sharing similar flat polygonal graphics to 1989 stablemate Hard Drivin’, this game was arguably even more ambitious. While the titular Corvette may have been the main attraction, the digital version of San Francisco is the true star, including an approximation of the real road layout and even landmarks including the Golden Gate bridge, something that must have been spectacular in an era when New Kids on the Block were riding high in the charts.

Retrospectively, Vette! starts to look like a sort of proto-GTA, with its freedom to explore an open cityscape and what might have been a world first option to mow down pedestrians in a 3D environment. Fortunately we’re not sure the tabloids even knew what a video game was in 1989.

Mounting the pavement wasn’t necessarily a good idea, though. Erratic driving of any sort was likely to attract the attention of the police but, in an inspired move, when caught the game presented a list of excuses to use. They ranged from ‘I’m late for my son’s birthday party’, through ‘I needed to find a bathroom, badly’ to the rather more straightforward ‘I’m test driving this Corvette’.

Not that the last one has ever worked in our experience...