Highway Pursuit
Highway Pursuit puts you behind the wheel of a blue sports car with two guns in the nose, viewed from above on a highway that just keeps going. Enemy vehicles mix in with everyday traffic, and telling them apart is half the game.
The road bends randomly, so you never drive the same stretch twice. Frank Force built it for his LittleJS Arcade, and it plays with a keyboard, a mouse, a controller or on-screen buttons.
How to play Highway Pursuit
Once you press Play, the car rolls up to cruising pace. You can push harder or back off, though after that point it will not dip under a minimum speed. Simply covering ground adds to your score, while knocking out enemies adds far more.
Red cars with blades on the sides are worth 200, and yellow cars carrying a roof gun are worth 300 and shoot at you. Both take three hits. Blue sedans and brown wagons belong to ordinary drivers, and wrecking one takes 750 off your score and drops the multiplier to x1. The bulky light blue car is armored, so bullets bounce off it. Push it off the road or lure it over oil.
Three enemy kills give you x2 and seven give x3. You get three lives, plus a bonus life for each 10,000 points with a cap of five. A crash or an enemy bullet takes one away.
Controls
| Action | Keyboard | Mouse | Touch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steer | Left/Right arrows or A/D | Move the pointer sideways | On-screen stick |
| Speed up or slow down | Up/Down arrows or W/S | — | Bottom button / rightmost button |
| Fire guns | Hold Space | Hold left button | Hold the leftmost button |
| Oil slick | Z | — | — |
| Smoke screen | X | — | — |
| Restart | R | — | Menu, then Restart |
| Pause menu | Escape | Menu icon | Menu icon |
Tips
- Keep bursts short near civilians. The guns only point forward, and a sedan drifting into your line will catch the shots.
- Oil lands right behind your car and stays for eight seconds, so save it for whoever is tailgating you.
- Pop smoke when you are hemmed in. Anything inside the cloud swerves at random, stops hunting you and fires off target.
- Stay glued to the side of an armored car. The shove grows the longer you keep contact, until it skids off the asphalt.
- At x3, one careless bullet into traffic wipes out far more than the flat 750-point penalty, so slow your trigger finger.
If you like Highway Pursuit, try these
River StrikeShooting your way down a scrolling lane carries over to a jet over water, where grabbing fuel matters as much as aim.
Speedway SprintWeaving through slower traffic is the heart of this lap racer too, minus the guns and with a one-minute clock.
Questions
How do you get oil slicks in Highway Pursuit?
They are earned, not given. Each fourth enemy you wreck adds one oil slick, and each sixth adds a smoke screen. You can carry five of either, and the stock is shown on the bar at the bottom.
Can I play Highway Pursuit on a phone?
Partly. Touch buttons handle steering, speed and shooting, but the oil and smoke weapons have no button of their own, so you need keys or a gamepad to use them.
Does Highway Pursuit save my score?
Yes. Your top score is written to local storage, so it is waiting for you the next time you open the game in that browser.
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