Turbo Science is at heart a quiz-race game; players answer science questions for money, and spend money on the map to advance from checkpoint to checkpoint, with faster transportation costing more money. There are three opponents across 21 races (current WR being between 2-5 minutes per race):
Five races against the easy opponent, Das Liquidators; Seven races against the medium opponent, Cool City Maulers; and Nine races against the hard opponent, Valiant Cubed.
It is NOT necessary to get all questions correct or answer in the fastest possible time to get a lossless run. Losing a race means replaying that race from the start; the game finishes after 21 victories, no matter how many losses you have long the way. Be aware that the final opponent can sometimes be very difficult to beat (at present, I think that the hardest race level is Vahula 3) unless you are really on top of your questions.
The game must be played in a DOS emulator such as DOSBox. I have found that the ideal CPU configuration for running the game is 10000 cycles; less creates additional load times and lag, while at higher CPU speeds, the mouse immediately fails to work. At this speed, there is still a noticeable load time, but that is (at present?) unavoidable. As an interface note, because this is a Sierra game, if during gameplay you click on the very top of the screen, you will get the pause menu, similar to any of the adventure games they published in that era.
LEARNING THE GAME
I am not aware of any mechanical difference between Quarky and Quaysoo as racers. They are clearly intended to be male/female skins for inclusivity reasons, with no "speed/power" type dynamic where you might favor one over the other.
Not all of the questions in the game are phrased well. Some of them are just tricky, while others may contain mistakes. As an educational game, Turbo Science provides all the necessary tools in-game for you to learn the science they're asking you--or, you can just memorize the answers to questions. Some of the answer are also obvious by context without reading the question--if you are given three options and two of them are equivalent, it's probably the third. None of the questions are randomly generated so much as they are picked from a list. Questions that contain numbers will have the same numbers every time they show up, and no objective facts about the scene (temperatures, etc) ever change.
Every map location has different questions, and any map location may come up during a speedrun (though I swear it has favorites). While some topics seem to come up almost everywhere, you can infer what kind of questions you'll see from the location. While you are learning the game, you might as well use the tools that they have available, such as the 'eye', to make sure you're clear on what they're showing you. On the screen with the dams and power plants, for example, it may not be clear that the top-left power plant is Geothermal, the one producing black smoke is coal, or that the small building behind the coal plant's exhaust plumes supplies natural gas to the city.
If you are casually clicking on locations on the map in practice mode, there are some locations you may miss, namely the nuclear power plant (which you might think is part of the dam map; it's the large single tower on the left), the waterfall (just above the Ferris wheel between the observatory and the ski resort), wave beach (right where the large wave hits shore), muscle beach (the empty bit of sand between the pirate ship and the concert), and the lake shore. Most of the other locations should be obvious and distinct from one another.
There are many game questions that ask you to measure quantities in-game using the tools available in the button in the bottom left, either in absolute terms ("Who weighs X pounds") or relative terms ("Who is tallest"). Many of these are not necessarily obvious from context clues (such as which engine is hottest on the race track), and you should just expect to remember which is which. The lake shore map has a variation that asks you to add quantities together, but again, these questions are static and not randomly generated.
During a race, be aware that in-game "race" time goes faster on the map than it does while answering questions, and that race time pauses during the after-question cutscenes. For the sake of not losing races, you should not spend any time unpaused on the overworld map, especially in the later matches against V3.
SPEEDRUN STARTER TIPS
Occasionally I have had the mouse cursor disappear when switching to and from the game. If this happens, bringing up the pause menu with Escape should bring the cursor back.
The maximum amount of money you can have is $9999 "four-nines". It's a waste to get this much money on purpose. Every correct question gains you $700, though you will occasionally get bonus questions worth $1500 (you will be notified with a cutscene that you must click through). Incorrect answers lose you $200 per. There is no penalty for skipping questions, and no monetary benefit to repeating a question and getting it right (though if you know the answer, it saves you from having to reread the question). Fourteen correct answers (with no mistakes and no bonuses) nets you $9800, essentially a full wallet. In the late game, you may need to efficiently calculate how many questions you need to stay ahead of the competition, so brush up on math if you aren't comfortable with it.
The most expensive transit costs I've seen (Maximum speed on a long leg) are slightly over $6000, however the more common maximum cost is $4800. This number was likely chosen so that you could make two legs at $4800 each on a full wallet.
After answering a question (correctly or incorrectly) and clicking to skip the cutscene, your mouse cursor will automatically move to the "next question" button. However, if you click on the "Go to map" or "Repeat question" buttons during the cutscene (though the repeat button will be hidden), those clicks will count and your mouse will not jump around. Be careful not to hit the back to map button on accident.
In part because of the load times, it will almost always be a faster run to stock up money and move several times back to back rather than stopping multiple times en route, even if you use the slowest transit (as long as you're far enough ahead to not risk a loss). Especially when facing the first opponent, you will get a faster time doing all checkpoints from the start instead of burning your cash by taking fast transit and stopping to answer questions. This is not possible later on, so save time when you can.
Even the hardest opponent rarely uses Tier 5 (fastest) transportation, giving you a chance to catch up if they are ahead of you. This is important in some late races where the opponent spends almost no time answering questions and the rest of the time in transit; when this happens, you must minimize time on the overworld map to prevent a loss by answering more questions and buying only Tier 5 transit. If you are ahead, you can feel confident that Tier 4 transit will not cost you the race, but when you aren't or if it's close, Tier 5 is your best bet.
