Make Trax
| Industry | Video games |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1981 |
| Headquarters | Japan |
| Products | Make Trax (Crush Roller) |
Make Trax, known in Japan as , is a maze-style game created in 1981 by Alpha Denshi and distributed as an arcade video game by Kural Samno Electric within Japan. In Europe, it was licensed to Exidy, who retained the original title Crush Roller for their release, while in North America, Williams Electronics published it under the name Make Trax.
Gameplay
The player maneuvers a reddish-orange paintbrush with the goal of covering the entire maze in paint to progress through levels. Two fish characters—one yellow and one light blue—appear from aquariums and chase the paintbrush; colliding with them costs the player one of three lives.
Offensive capabilities come from two "rollers" located on elevated tracks—one aligned vertically and the other horizontally. By positioning the paintbrush at a roller's edge, players can push it along its path to strike the fish, temporarily removing them from play and awarding bonus points. As levels advance, the fish exhibit smarter behavior, learning to evade rollers and coordinate ambushes.
A third entity, which changes depending on the stage, leaves trails that must be repainted to complete the board. Players can interrupt this character by running over it, stopping further trail creation and earning progressively higher score bonuses for each cleared board.
Reception
In 1981, Crush Roller achieved notable commercial success in Japan, ranking as the ninth top-grossing arcade title of the year.
Legacy
ADK developed a remake for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, released globally by SNK in 1999 under the original title Crush Roller. This version preserved fundamental gameplay elements while redesigning levels for the smaller display and enhancing audiovisual quality using more advanced system capabilities. The remake was later reissued in 2021 within the Windows release of Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1.
A clone named Brush Roller was created for Famicom/NES in 1990 by Hwang Shinwei and published by RCM Group. Subsequently, NTDEC modified this version into Bookyman, which appeared on multi-game cartridges such as Caltron 6-in-1 and Asder 20-in-1. These hacked editions featured altered title screens, updated graphics, revised soundtracks, and bug fixes that improved overall gameplay stability.
An unofficial speed modification called Make Trax Turbo increases the paintbrush's movement velocity while leaving enemy behavior unchanged.