Roland Goes Racing
Introduction
A new adventure for the infamous Roland for the Amstrad CPC/CPC+/GX4000 by Lachlan Keown, released April 2026.
When run on CPC+/GX4000 hardware (or emulator), additional hardware sprites will be used to enhance the gameplay.
Music by Mr. Lou
Intro screen
Game plot
Drive Roland over the bumpy hills to reach the chequered flag before the time runs out! 255 levels in all.
Try and match the slope when landing or your buggy will crash, slowing you down.
Controls
Game may be controlled by either left/right cursor keys or joystick/joypad.
Left for brake, right/fire for gas.
In the menu, level codes (4 characters) may be entered by keyboard then fire, or use up/down/left/right on the joystick/joypad to enter code.
If an incorrect code is entered, level will default to 1.
Development
Written entirely in C with CPCTelera apart from asic/hardware sprite drawing routines.
I began this project in 2015 as a simple proof of concept of a software-scrolled hillscape written in C.
After playing the mobile game "Hill climb racer", I wanted to replicate the basic mechanics but put it aside as too hard, as family, work etc was occupying too much time.
With the advent of AI, I decided to revisit the project (after an 11 year break!) and completed the game in the almost 3 weeks between 31st of March and 16th of April 2026. AI allowed me to speed up development, especially around the physics. Although it is by no means perfect and still requires a lot of hand-holding.
My goal was to have the game run flicker-free at 50hz, i.e. a full new frame is drawn and updated every refresh of the screen.
I also wanted a game I could play on my physical gx4000 console so added a few little enhancements for the plus models, such as some scrolling hardware sprites for clouds/trees and a chequered flag.
Download
- racing.dsk (DSK file for Emulators)
- rracing.cpr.zip (CPR file for GX4000/Plus)
