The Jetsons: Space Race is a driving or kart style game that was developed in the middle nineties and distributed as freeware. It features all of the fully licensed characters from the Hanna Barbera classic cartoon, still viewed on Boomerang and Cartoon Network. It was developed using Macromedia Director, and while simple, is still adequately entertaining.
The premise of the game revolves around the fact that the father of an average space-aged family is running late for work.
As any fan of the cartoon series knows, poor George always seems to be fried and is always in fear of losing his job at Spacely Sprockets. In this game, George has just a few minutes to get to work on time, and unfortunately has a lot of stops to make on the way. His youngest boy, Elroy, has to be dropped off at the Little Dipper School while his elder daughter Judy will be attending Orbit High School. Astro, the famous Jetsons pooch, will need to go to the Galaxy K-9 School and his wife Jane needs to be deposited at the Shopping Center. As if that were not all bad enough, there is a lot of the typical
rush hour space traffic for poor George to fight.
The game play is as simple as the concept. The game scrolls sideways, and George can drive both to the right and left. Running along straight planes are the other drivers that George will have to avoid. The arrow keys will raise and lower George’s space craft as he travels and the right and left keys will control his speed. If he should happen to strike another vehicle, he does not die, but bounces off the vehicle and runs in the opposite direction for a time, burning valuable seconds off the clock. Along the bottom of the screen are some mundane buildings, and also those where George’s family need to be placed, which are all plainly marked. If George flies close enough to one of these buildings, the appropriate family member will offload upon striking the space bar. The upper right hand corner has a bust of each family member that is still on board, so the user knows who has to be delivered to their destination. George has a total of 99 seconds to get the entire job done and get to work.
This is a very simple game. The controls are easy to learn and the graphics are colorful and very Jetsons. There is no pixelation in the busts of the family, and the space taxis and towers look very much like what one would see in the Jetsons cartoon. Overall, Jetsons: Space Race is a great reflection of the cartoon, both in look and theme.
