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By Michael

"This is Nancy at Chase Headquarters... we've got an emergency here! Ralph, the Idaho slasher is fleeing towards the suburbs... the target vehicle is a white British sports car... over."

"10-4 Nancy, we read you loud and clear..."

The Commodore Amiga, at its peak in the early 1990s.

So begins the first adventure of Ocean's latest 2002 release - Chase HQ 3 for the Commodore Amiga. With such lovable characters and fast European cars of the 1980s, sales would be soaring, right? Wrong. Figures indicate the game is off to a slow start.

Discounts are up, the game's been delayed by a decade and, according to one index, buyers are wary. Ocean strenuously insists nothing's amiss, says it doesn't expect to sell as many copies as it did during their record-setting 1989 release of Chase HQ, and offers an explanation for every knock against the belated last installment in this racing trilogy.

Above: The new Ocean headquarters, based on CEO Chris Chalmer's vacant farm block.

The software company's passion defending Chase HQ 3 shows the game's importance to Ocean's image and profit. Ocean have taken the title of best seller of Amiga games for 2002, and aren't planning on apologizing for delaying the launch for ten years to fix bugs and "sort out the company" to something more "managable".

"We want to get this game just right," said Ocean's CEO Chris Chalmers, "We want the handling to be perfect. We have even made the controversial decision to release the game on four 880KB floppies to allow more gameplay and better graphics than ever before seen on a Commodore Amiga. There will be 3 exotic cars to choose from."

Sceptics are quick to point out the superiority of other platforms, such as Win32 or XBox, however Ocean insists its commitment to Amiga owners is impenetrable.

Chase HQ 3's lead programmer, Steven McDonald said "Sure, you could buy an XBox, and sure, you'd be pushing 300 million polygons per second, but what does that really mean? Why push polys at all? What is a polygon? True 3D is overrated. Chase HQ 3 uses a custom built parallax scrolling rendering engine and makes excellent use of detailed sprites and 8-bit mono sound, for a stronger, thicker soundtrack. We use four channel MOD files, none of this MP3 bullshit XBox is using these days."

"I don't want to even get started on the transmission systems the latest games for PC and XBox are using - 5 gears? What the hell is that? Who is going to remember what gear they're in? We have gone for a more classic two gear system, a choice which consumers are bound to love. High and low. The true essence of driving."

McDonald is certain sales will pick up when consumers discover the flexibility of the engine in handling such terrains as flat desert, flat highway and flat jungle. "The use of sprites in the jungle is exceptionally good!" added Chalmers, giving McDonald a hearty pat on the back. "There are even hills in there - I won't give away how we've done it, after all, that's one of the secrets of the company - but lets just say that by offsetting each depth render by a small amount we can feign slight inclines quite realistically, to give a breathtakingly subtle effect!"

In terms of multiplayer support, according to McDonald, "there isn't any networking support as such, however there is a split screen option, and players can play one after another to see who can get the highest score. You could so some other stuff too, I don't know, try to hit as many cars as you can before you blow up, or something."

When asked to compare screenshots of Gran Turismo 3 for Playstation 2 and Chase HQ 3 for Commodore Amiga, McDonald became agitated and simply stated "Look guy, you can be all 'uprighteous' and 'pick' the 'flaws' in our game, sure, you can 'point out' how 'bad' it looks for '2002'," McDonald paused briefly, then stopped talking, a satisfied look growing on his face.

Chase HQ 3 is available at all software outlets now.

We know what we are, but not what we may be.