Turbo

Summary

Based on the 1981 Sega arcade title of the same name, *Turbo* was one of those long-rumored prototypes that many believed existed somewhere (it was briefly displayed at the 1983 CES), but had never actually surfaced. Fortunately, this changed when former Atari 2600 developer Anthony Henderson discovered his long-lost copy of *Turbo* while rummaging through his attic. According to the programmer, Coleco initially planned for the game to use paddle controllers to more accurately mimic a steering wheel. However, reading input from paddles consumed significantly more processing time than using standard joysticks, and there wasn’t enough CPU power left to animate the road edges. After some convincing, Coleco agreed to switch to joysticks, which freed up enough processing time to include the road edge animation—but the game was ultimately cancelled before that feature was ever added. Other missing elements included the ambulance, water puddles, and the enemy car AI (which was technically present in the current prototype but never refined or finalized). The difficulty also needed some adjustment, as avoiding oncoming traffic in this version relied more on luck than skill. According to the programmer, there was actually one more version of the game completed before the project was shut down, which added moving trees along the sides of the road in the curved sections. The whereabouts of that particular prototype remain unknown. *Turbo* was never released due to a car accident. Lead programmer Michael Green was struck by a drunk driver while cycling and suffered serious injuries. Unable to work on the game while recovering in the hospital, the deadline passed without the title being completed. It had already been delayed due to the time spent by the developers changing the control system from paddles to joysticks. By the time the team was back on track, the video game market was beginning to collapse, and Coleco decided not to release the game. Interestingly, many years later, Atari acquired the entire Coleco VCS game library, including *Turbo*. While Atari only re-released a few Coleco titles, *Turbo* was added to the master release list. It remains unclear whether Atari was planning to complete *Turbo*, or if it was simply included without realizing the game was unfinished.