Gameplay
Set in the year 2003, the player controls an Omegan Fighter spacecraft, spaceship to destroy enemy droid ships in a rectangular "track." The player's ship is controlled with a spinner to rotate the ship, a button for thrusting, and a button for firing lasers. The enemies that the player must destroy or avoid are drone ships, commander ships, two types of space mines, and shooting star ships. The ship bounces off an invisible barrier on the edges of the screen that briefly appears when hit. By default, 1-up, extra ships are awarded at 40,000 and 100,000 points.Ports
The Atari 2600 cartridge came bundled with a "booster grip" controller which converted the single-button Atari CX40 joystick to having separate buttons for thrust and shoot. ''Omega Race'' is one of a few CBS games for the Atari 2600 with an additional 256 bytes of RAM in each cartridge, a feature promoted by CBS as "RAM Plus."Reception
''Consumer Guide''s ''How To Win At Video Games'' stated in 1982 of ''Omega Race'' that "any unskilled player can pop a quarter into the machine and stay up there for up to 20,000 points." According to the book, more than 35,000 machines were created, with the average machine taking in $181.00 per week at the time of the book's publication. Frequently, it was one of the top ten money-making arcade machines in any given week in that time period. ''Compute!'' called ''Omega Race'' "a real winner for the VIC". ''BYTE'' stated that the Commodore VIC-20, VIC-20 version "is fast paced, has colorful graphics, and features good sound effects ... ''Omega Race'' is a fun game that retains all the best characteristics of the arcade version". ''Ahoy!'' called the VIC-20 version "fairly faithful to the arcade game, and very exciting". The VIC-20 version of ''Omega Race'' was awarded a Certificate of Merit in the category of "Best Solitaire Computer Game" at the 4th annual Arkie Awards.Legacy
''Omega Race'' was cloned for the TRS-80 Color Computer as ''Space Race'' in 1982. An update of the game for the Atari Jaguar was pitched to Atari Corporation by Temporary Sanity Designs, however, it never moved forward beyond the proposal phase and the document is in the hands of community member joekorali of AtariAge.References
External links
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Omega Race 1981 video games Midway video games Arcade video games Atari 2600 games Cancelled Atari Jaguar games ColecoVision games Commodore 64 games VIC-20 games Racing video games Single-player video games Shoot 'em ups Vector arcade video games Video games developed in the United States Video games set in 2003 Video games set in outer space