DESCRIPTION

An early arcade game from Exidy, Spectar continues that company's fascination with racing/combat games. The player guides a speedy green vehicle around a grid-like maze, avoiding several red vehicles while trying to collect a series of green dots near the center of the screen. Advancing to the next level requires the collection of all the dots, or the destruction of all enemies on the screen. As the player progresses, the maze becomes a little more complex, with some components of the "grid" joining together to form longer walls (and cut off potential escape routes). Spectar is very much like an earlier Exidy coin-op, Targ, only with some twists (the dots, probably evidence of the designers picking up ideas from Pac-Man, didn't exist in Targ, nor did the expanding walls), and echoes Exidy games all the way back to the first-ever controversial arcade game, Death Race. Audio-visually, Spectar is barely a step above early computer games using letters and block characters for graphics, but for fast-paced (and often frustratingly addictive) fun it's a winner. ~ Earl Green, All Game Guide