Tunnel B1

I'll be straight with you: I came into Tunnel B1 half expecting a forgotten gem, and walked out with a complicated relationship. This is a mid-90s first-person hovercraft shooter, originally developed by NEON Software and published by Ocean back in 1996, now resurrected on Steam by Piko Interactive. The core loop drops you into a claustrophobic network of tunnels where you pilot a high-tech B1 hovercraft, gunning down enemy vehicles, helicopters, and sentry turrets while racing against tight sector time limits. Weapon upgrades are collectable along the way, and every level comes with a full map you can pull up at any time. On paper, that sounds like a tidy little arcade package. In practice, the experience is noisier and messier than that pitch suggests. The biggest issue the Steam community keeps circling back to is the port itself. The package ships with both a DOSBox version of the original PC release and a PS1 version, which sounds generous until you hit the friction. Several players report the DOSBox build running poorly, with framerate problems and display glitches, while the PS1 version works more reliably but drags over jittery controls that cannot be remapped in any intuitive way. There is no gamepad configuration worthy of the name. For a game whose entire identity is speed and tight movement through narrow corridors, uncooperative controls are a serious problem. This is not the kind of retro re-release where someone has put in the work to modernize the experience. On pure gameplay mechanics, Tunnel B1 is fast and occasionally exhilarating in short bursts. Dodging incoming fire, blasting choppers out of a ceiling cavity, and scrambling to hit a checkpoint before the timer hits zero has a real pulse to it. The camera is fixed low to the ground at a slightly upward angle, which gave reviewers headaches back in 1996 and still does now. It makes spatial awareness genuinely uncomfortable, and there is no option to adjust the perspective. The difficulty curve is also brutal in ways that feel less designed and more like oversight: enemies in mid-game ramp up to a level that punishes the hovercraft's restricted firing arc, since you can only shoot straight ahead. Miss a helicopter hovering just off-axis and you are restarting the whole mission, because saves only happen between levels. The one area that holds up genuinely well is the soundtrack. Chris Huelsbeck, who also scored the Turrican series, composed the music, and it is exactly the kind of hard-driving, atmospheric synth work you want under this kind of relentless arcade action. The visual lighting effects were impressive enough in 1996 to earn praise, and they still carry a certain retro-futuristic charm in the tunnel sections. If you grew up with this game on PS1 or caught the PC demo, that charm is probably what brought you here. Just know that nostalgia is doing most of the heavy lifting. For casual players or anyone without patience for trial-and-error replays, this is going to be a rough ride. There is no co-op, no split-screen, no multiplayer of any kind. It is a solo arcade experience built for a very specific audience: retro collectors and people who genuinely loved the original and want it on their Steam library. If you are on the fence, the PS1 version is the more functional route in, and running the disc image through a separate PS1 emulator is a workaround some players swear by. Just do not expect a polished modern port.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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