Suicide Express, published in 1984 by Gremlin Graphics, is a spin-off from designer Tony Crowther‘s previous game, Loco. It is a train game in the mould of the classic Sega arcade game, Super Locomotive.

This game, though, is futuristic, dark, and hard-edged. It’s also considerably faster than Loco and moves at a frightening pace. It still plays exactly the same as Loco, though, and is just as repetitive.

Suicide Express has some digitised speech in the opening of the game, which was novel at the time but is laughable now.

Like a lot of Crowther‘s early games: the levels in Suicide Express don’t change much graphically – the increase in difficulty comes from the addition of more and more enemies – which is disappointing; I would’ve have liked to have seen some different background graphics and colours at least.

Crowther also made a spin-off from Suicide Express – namely: Black Thunder, published by Avalon Hill in the US and Quicksilva in the UK – which was heavily criticised for its similarity to this game.

More: Suicide Express on Moby Games