Highway Pursuit

Highway Pursuit is a computer game created by Adam Dawes in association with Retrospec, initially released in 2003. Highway Pursuit puts you in control of a powerful sports car in a world filled with enemy agents seeking to take control of the road. Your mission is to destroy as many of these enemy agents as possible, without putting any civilian life at risk.

Along the way you will encounter varied terrain and weather conditions, a number of different enemy vehicles intent on your destruction, and also a few helpful pointers from your colleague Ashley back at HQ.

Your Car
Your car is equipped with a front-mounted machine gun, which is your main weapon for use against the enemy cars. You have unlimited ammunition for the machine gun, but be careful not to hit the civilian vehicles when firing.

The car is also capable of being upgraded with a number of add-on weapons. These are described in the extra weapons section of this page. Additional weapons that are fitted will be displayed as a glowing icon at the bottom/left of the screen.

In the bottom right of the screen is a speedometer that displays how fast your car is currently moving. Immediately above this is the health display (a red heart icon). As your car sustains damage, the health will slowly deplete. When it runs out, your car explodes and you lose a life. Health recharges very slowly over time as you drive along. A small health boost is also given for docking with any weapons van, and a larger boost for docking with the repair van, which are the yellow and black. They are not very common, but not as rare as the life van.

Drive with care to avoid damaging your car. You must stay on the road at all times; straying onto the grass will cause severe damage to your (or any other) vehicle. This can be a useful way of dispatching enemy cars, however ramming them off the edge of the road can cause extreme damage to your car if you are not careful.

Enemies
There are several types of enemy vehicles that will try to destroy you.

Crasher
The first type of car you will encounter. These cars are relatively harmless (only dangerous in mass numbers) and attack you by ramming you from the side or from behind. They will try to push you off the side of the road. They are a purple colour.

Blade
This enemy is a much nastier piece of work. These cars have retractable knives fitted to their wheels. If you are rammed from the side by a Blade vehicle when the knives are fully extended, your tyres will burst causing you to spin out of control off the road. Be very careful of these orange cars!

Jeep
The Jeep is bullet-proof, and no amount of attack from your machine guns will get this car out of your way. The only ways to destroy these green cars are to push them off the side of the road, or to use oil or smoke in front of them so that they drive off the side of the road.

Chopper
Hovering above you and able to follow you wherever you go, the Chopper can make quite a nuisance of itself. It will drop bombs in front of you that create huge craters in the road, causing massive damage to any car that should drive over them. The Chopper can only be destroyed using Surface-to-Air Missiles, available from a weapons van, though it will fly away on its own when it runs out of bombs to drop.

Weapon Vans
Weapons vans are friendly vehicles. Different types of vans give you different types of assistance. Vans will either repair your vehicle or give you some type of weapon.

Smoke van
Fits a smoke-screen to your car. When deployed, the smoke screen forms a wide blanket of dense smoke across the road. The smoke does not cause any damage to vehicles that are caught in it, but causes them to drive blindly to the side to get out of the smoke. It can therefore be used to edge cars off the road.

Oil van
Fits an oil canister to the back of your car. When deployed, the oil pours out on to the road behind you, causing any cars that drive over it to skid uncontrollably until they crash. This can be very powerful, and also allows you to destroy the armoured Jeep, but be careful not to let civilians get caught in the mess.

Missile van
Adds a small number of Surface-to-Air missiles to your car. These can be used to try to destroy the helicopter. You should try to fire the missile when the helicopter is as near to directly above you as possible to minimise the chance of the missile missing its target.

Repair van
Repairs some of the damage your car has sustained while driving. All of the weapon vans provide a small boost, but the repair van does the best job of getting the car back into shape.

Life Van
These are the rarest vans in the game. They are identical to the van that starts you off every time you die or start a new game.

Scoring
You are awarded points for the following:
 * Distance driven
 * Destroying an enemy Crasher car: 500 points
 * Destroying an enemy Blade car: 1,000 points
 * Destroying an enemy Jeep car: 1,500 points
 * Destroying a helicopter: 5,000 points
 * Docking with a weapons van: 500 points

If you destroy a civilian car, all scoring will be suspended for five seconds. During this period, "...no score..." will be displayed at the top of the screen instead of your game score.

You will be given an extra life every 100,000 points.