The Void - Famiclone Frequenters #1: Make Trax

Let's talk about Famiclones. Yeah, those pieces of Chinese plastic junk that you get at the local flea market or drug store, the ones with names like "Power Joy Playing Kid 59" or "Play and Shoot Action Boy 5489 in 1". They're called Famiclones for an obvious reason, the fact that they are just hardware clones of the Famicom or NES shoved into a different plastic shell. Due to that, they often have many games from both systems, including international releases, Japan-only games, and even games the developers made themselves. Usually these are big names like Contra, Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, Pac-Man and others, but there's a strangely wide selection of certain games most nobody has heard of. Some of these seem to have perfect attendance on nearly every Famiclone system and bootleg multicarts, despite being very miniscule names in the world of gaming. In this series, we'll take a look at a few of the more interesting games that tend to pop up on bootleg systems and carts, starting with....

Make Trax/Crush Roller

By Alpha Denshi, 1981

Alpha Denshi is a Japanese company best known for their Neo-Geo games such as World Heroes and Magician Lord, but like almost all video game companies, they had several titles before their big hits. One of these was the slightly bizarre maze game Crush Roller.

Somehow the thing I think the weirdest thing going on here is that you're a red paintbrush leaving green paint trails.

In the game Crush Roller, you play as a paintbrush whose goal is to cover an entire area with paint. However, you aren't unopposed in your conquest for mass vandalism. Throughout the game, you are constantly pursued by two fish who really want you dead, and you also have to deal with various characters that will leave tracks in your paint trails, forcing you to cover them up again. Thankfully, you have a good method of defense up your sleeve: the paint rollers. Situated in various sections of the playfield are little blue masses of pixels that vaguely resemble a comb. These are supposed to be paint rollers. When you move over them, your brush moves a lot faster, and can crush any fish in your way. As for the creatures wandering the maze and ruining your trails, you simply touch them yourself to get rid of them. Both enemies frequently respawn, however, so you'll want to hurry up and finish the maze so you won't have to continually deal with them.

Crush Roller was licensed by Williams Electronics for arcade distribution in the US, under the name Make Trax (which we will use as the name from here on out, because shut up.), and it was also licensed by Exidy for European distribution. I'm not sure it was a very big success in the arcades, but it's a fun little game that's worth a play or two should you find it in a retro arcade.

Source: kcfreeloader @ Photobucket

I'm too impressed by the sweet colors on that cab to make a snarky comment.

With Make Trax being a rather unknown game, it's a bit weird that a company would think about trying to make money off of it. It was probably unknown enough in the early 80's, let alone 10 years from then. But we're talking about bootleggers here. These people aren't exactly well known for their marketing decisions. Because of this, Make Trax has seen a strange revival of sorts as a small staple of various multicarts and Famiclone systems, under the name Brush Roller.

Source: BootlegWiki

And here I was thinking the game was weird enough in its original form...

This version of the game is mostly the same, aside from scoring differences, some sprite and color changes, added music, a timer and the fact that it gives you 9 lives instead of 3. I can't tell if that's the devs alluding to the fact that the game has multiple cats in it, or if they just think everyone sucks at the game. It's also worth noting that the music is ripped from the unlicensed Columns clone Magic Jewelry. (I may cover that one later.) The interesting parts end here, because it's really just the same game. This port was also slightly modified and renamed to Bookyman for its appearance on Caltron's 6 in 1 cart. The graphics, name and new title screen are really the only distinct features, so there's not much to talk about with this version, aside from how weird the name is.

With that, things are about wrapped up here. While Make Trax was on a few systems and carts, it isn't as ubiquitous as other games, so it has less bizarre variations and hacks to speak of. Overall, it's just a quirky little maze game that's almost better remembered for its bootleg usage than its arcade performance, joining the ranks of many. This is pretty much all I can stand to write about this game.

Until next time, and thanks for reading!