The Outer Limits

Journeys to the farthest reaches of interactive entertainment

- ALEX SPENCER

After more than a year, with over 400 hours on the clock, I think my time with UFO 50 might finally be up. Almost immediately after putting the game down, though, I start missing it. So imagine my delight on hearing that Jon Perry, one of its core designers, has something new out. A new way to get my UFO 50 fix.

Said game, Hot Streak, even has a direct connection to Mossmouth's retro opus. It's a once-removed relative of UFO 50's Quibble Race (itself a remake of a Windows game made by Perry and Derek Yu), with a single common ancestor: a game made by Yu in high school, on his TI calculator. These are, essentially, all horse-race betting games, of the kind you'd find at fairgrounds or pier amusement arcades, where you insert your coin and gamble on the outcome of races over which you have no direct control.

Except in Quibble Race you're betting on the little green men of the title, who can be doped or have their legs broken between races. Hot Streak ups the ante further still, racing perhaps the most inherently ungainly beasts on the planet: sports mascots. Oh, and there's one more twist I should mention, which puts Hot Streak firmly in the remit of this column. It isn't a videogame.