155. Route-16 Turbo (Sunsoft, Famicom, 1985)

Route-16 Turbo is a Famicom port of 1981 Sunsoft arcade game Route 16. Gameplay is similar to Pac-Man in that you are a car navigating through a maze while avoiding other invincible cars chasing you and collecting all of the items (in this case money and checkered flags). Where Route-16 Turbo gets interesting is the map. You start on a single screen, but when you leave any of the boundaries of that screen, the map zooms out to reveal a grid of 16 individual mazes in a 4x4 grid. While your car was discernible, it is now a tiny teal square, and this perspective felt pretty cool for a 1985 game.

You can navigate around the 4x4 grid of mazes, entering each of them through small holes in the sides in order to collect the items within (which are mercifully marked on the overall map). You cannot actually see the internals of each maze, so you might enter a maze from an entrance only to find you can't actually get the items in that maze without entering a different side. The mazes themselves were varied and interesting in their patterns, some mechanically, while others just had fun designs (there was one shaped like a martini, another spelled out "SUN SOFT").

You car also does not stop when it hits a wall, it just turns automatically unless you are pushing a direction. You can also use the A button for a turbo boost, which uses extra fuel (you can pick up one fuel refill per level. Sometimes, as you are approaching a moneybag to pick it up, it will turn into an poil spot, which slows you down for a few seconds. The actual motion is interesting as well: your car does not crash when it hits a wall, it just turns, which makes it fun to just autopilot your car on certain mazes.

After clearing a level, the screen cuts to a message giving you a secret letter, though for the life of me I could not figure out what to do with these letters. While early levels were pretty simple with a handful of items to collect, later levels feel much more daunting with tons of pickups dotting the map, though the later levels also were way more satisfying to clear.

4/5, a fun, simple twist on the Pac-Man formula