Reviews

With the runaway success of flight simulators early in the Spectrum's life, programmers eventually tried to spin off the idea into a whole range of other forms of transport; we got helicopters, racing cars, motorbikes, trains, bob-sleighs and in this case trucks.

The concept is fairly simple: Drive your truck around town, pick up various loads, drop them off where they're required, and try not to crash or run out of fuel in doing so. Things are complicated a bit by the fact that your map has no indication of where anything is on it; still, you can always stop off by a phone box to make a call to try and locate one. I'd rather hope that, even in the days before mobile phones and sat navs, that the Eddie Stobarts of this world could do a little better than that, mind you.

Driving around is rather difficult to get the hang of, and you'll need to get lots of practice in before being able to perform tricky manoeuvres like three point turns or reversing into a depot. Going forward in a straight line and taking bends isn't too hard though, especially as there's no other traffic on the road, and with a bit of practice you can soon be zipping around, and might even have to watch out for the odd speed camera. The graphics are fairly simple, but smooth and quite elegantly presented with an outline view of your truck against a solid background.

This probably isn't everyone's idea of fun, but the game was highly original and remains unique, even compared with other truck simulators. It's not a game for a quick blast, but well worth spending a bit of time getting into.

Another potentially good idea gets wasted in its realization. Simplistic graphics and gameplay pave the way to boredom pretty soon, dissolving the initial novelty value deriving from the unusual setting.

If the game's aim was to give its players all the fun and excitement of driving around a featureless town at slow speed dealing vegetables and fruit to grocery stores, it has been carried out extremely well.

1985 CRL (UK)
by Pete Cooke, Ian Ellery and Jay Derrett

Juggernaut is a wonderful truck simulator. It was perhaps the first of a generation of simulators, that is still going strong and popular around the gaming world. My favorite is still the realistic Euro Truck Simulator. But Juggernaut dates back to the Dinosaurs age, 1985!
And how wonderfully it played. Very realistic movement and speed (remember you are driving a truck within city limits, you don't need no speeding tickets!).

Due to using Vector Graphics, the games looks were never it's strongest point. Personally I don't like games which use V.G. but Juggernaut is an exception, because the playability is superb. And the city is competently designed and works just fine.
Is the game slow? Well, have you ever steered a truck within a city? I never thought it would be so hard...
If you've played any recent truck simulators you will get a hint of what the feel of speed is in a truck and the difficulty of steering it. So Juggernaut is very accurate for such an old caveman's game.

Then there's the strategy element. You are driving a merchandise truck, so you have to deliver your orders in time and safely. There is also refueling and maintenance to do which means a few visits to the garage, and you even have a helpline phone number you can use when in distress.
The steering is obviously the most difficult and frustrating part of the game, maybe why the programmers included a practice option, and practice leads to perfection. So jump on that leather seat and try to deliver your fruits and vegetables intact (or at least in juice form)!

This reminds me of a golden era of the Spectrum gone forever . . . 4,5 / 5 .