The Dukes of Hazzard: Racing for Home

by Southpeak

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00003OPE9
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: October 11, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,376 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PC

GameSpot Review

If you're not a fan of the Dukes of Hazzard, don't even consider buying Southpeak's Dukes of Hazzard: Racing for Home. If you're at a garage sale in the year 2010 reading this review on a tiny monitor embedded in your eyeball, and you say to yourself, "I have no idea who these Dukes of Hazzard are, but I can't go wrong for two yuan," rest assured that you can indeed go wrong. Any pleasure you're likely to get from playing Dukes of Hazzard will be predicated on having seen and enjoyed the TV show. For fans, the game is actually a decent re-creation of the experience of watching the program - only with boring, repetitive race sequences, which replace commercials. The story in Dukes of Hazzard is actually a lot better than the gameplay. From the moment you hear the opening theme and watch the rendered version of the show's title sequence, the game captures the goofy, cornball spirit of the series almost perfectly. Each of the game's 27 missions is sandwiched between a well-made cutscene narrated by the original program's balladeer, Waylon Jennings, and scored effectively by the country band The Tractors. Unfortunately, the driving sequences that make up the interactive portion of Dukes of Hazzard aren't nearly as good as these little movies.

Each of the missions involves either driving from one point to another within a certain amount of time, evading a car, catching a car, or participating in an actual race at the county fairgrounds. While this structure could provide enough variety to carry an entire game, the poor car physics make the missions tedious to play. As in the show, the vehicles don't react realistically to the world around them, but neither do they react in any way that could be considered very fun. The cars seem much too light, and any collision, regardless of its severity, appears to be a completely random chance of either having no effect at all or causing you to spin completely out of control.

As an incentive to continue playing, many driving games start you with a weak car and later give you access to a series of increasingly powerful vehicles. Dukes of Hazzard inexplicably reverses this device by starting you off with the best car, the General Lee, and periodically forcing you to complete missions while driving something much worse, such as Uncle Jessie's almost uncontrollable truck.

Dukes of Hazzard is a port of a PlayStation game released earlier this year. Though the resolution can be increased to as high as 1024x768, the visuals have the grainy, washed-out look common to many PlayStation-to-PC conversions. Furthermore, all the missions take place in very similar-looking areas of Hazzard county - though the game contains 27 levels, they all look essentially the same. By the fourth or fifth mission, you'll be hoping for some visual diversity that never arrives. And it never arrives in a big hurry: When the game is on the default difficulty setting, you can finish Dukes of Hazzard in about three hours.

The developers have added a multiplayer racing mode that's playable over TCP/IP, IPX, and through the Zone, but it's nothing more than a chance to experience the game's frustrating control problems communally. The developers' time might have been better spent adding support for gamepads, joysticks, and steering wheels: Amazingly, Dukes of Hazzard is controllable by keyboard only.

Dukes of Hazzard is incredibly short, has awful car physics and poor graphics, and nobody cared enough to even implement joystick support. But it is packaged well. It's the kind of mean trick that would make Boss Hogg proud.--Erik Wolpaw--Copyright © 2000 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great game for any dukes fan, March 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Dukes of Hazzard Racing for Home (CD-ROM)

This game contains several fast packed exciting car chases with several of hazards famous vehicles, and when you are not driving it's like watching an episode of the hit T.V series. The only minor disapointment is the voice of Bo. All other voices are accurate and authenting for a realistic video game.....(Virtual) Hazzard style!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great tv show, very poor game..., October 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Dukes of Hazzard Racing for Home (CD-ROM)

Graphics: 5, Gameplay: 4, Control: 1. Very very poor! Buy the Playstation version, not this!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good ol' racin' fun!, January 2, 2002

By 

Rick Douglas Janssen (Lake Zurich, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dukes of Hazzard Racing for Home (CD-ROM)

I received this game as a gift for Christmas as a "joke" gift, but was pleasantly surprised by it. If you remember the Dukes of Hazard from your childhood, this game captures all of the unrealistic car chase and jump scenes from the TV show and is a blast to play!

If you've played other racing games, this one is very similar. However, it's not solely a racing game, so the fastest doesn't always win. The game sets up various scenarios that just scream Dukes of Hazard. For example, the bank is robbed and Uncle Jessie's truck is carjacked for the get away vehicle, with Uncle Jessie inside. Your mission is to pull the truck over. This is accomplished by ramming into the truck to cause enough damage to pull it over. As an added distraction you have to avoid the occational oncoming car or truck, which can be pretty tricking going around a corner at 75 mph. So it's a cross between a racing game and a crash up derby game.

The controls are simple; you steer with the left and right arrow keys and use the forward arrow key as the accelerator. It takes a bit getting used to, because if you over steer you're going to find yourself doing some donuts. It's best to tap the directional keys and if you find yourself getting out of control (around corners especially) take your finger off the accelerator. You can use a game pad, though it doesn't allow you to configure the buttons as you can with the keyboard.

You are able to get nitrous oxide boosts to give you a kick in speed as well as oil slicks and the famous bow and arrow to help shoot out tires. There's even a scenario where you get to use the dynamite arrows!

The game was realistic in that you got better traction and higher speeds on the pavement than on the dirt road. Driving off the road on the grass was especially difficult. The actual car handling wasn't too realistic. Your car has a great ability of landing on or rolling onto its tires after a jump or a crash. But this just adds to the excitment of the game.

The game is short with nine episodes consisting of about three scenes apiece, but the game is inexpensive, so it off sets this drawback. The graphics aren't top quality, but then the game isn't slowed down by the computer having to render the images.

The easy setting is too easy. Playing on difficult offers quite a challenge and is recommended. My friends and I were cracking up the whole time we were playing this game. The cut scenes inbetween scenarios were hilarious. The game features the actual voices of James Best (Rosco P. Coltrane), Tom Wopat (Luke Duke), Sonny Shroyer (Enos Straitt), Ben Jones (Cooter Davenport), and Waylon Jennings (the Narrator). The opening credits mimic the TV credits, except it's all computer graphics.

This is not a serious racing game and doesn't pretend to be. It's simple, and unrealistic, but very fun! This is a game for a laughing good time to be spent chasing some criminals, smashing up some cars, and reminiscing about the Dukes of Hazard.

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