Producer: Mastertronic
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Paul Murray

D-biking is a sport for those with nerves of steel, terrific bike control, and the strength to survive being thrown off their machine countless times.

In Kikstart II, the sequel to Kikstart, two riders compete on a horizontally-split screen, each crossing an identical course of awesome obstacles ranging from simple, rough terrain and steep ramps to rows of pounding pistons and incinerating plumes of flame. Springboards can send a biker high into the air, gates and brick walls require steady riding, mud patches that can bog down the best.

So each rider must control his bike with skill, accelerating and braking, doing wheelies and jumping high when required. Only experience can teach you which riding technique is required when.

At every riding session five courses from a possible 24 can be chosen or randomly selected; a target time is given for each course together with a total for all five.

No matter how many times the riders take a tumble, they always remount - no lives are lost. But valuable time speeds on at twice the normal rate.

Using the course designer you can redefine keys, construct a new course or modify an old one, and set up obstacles to provide the most testing of dirt-bike challenges. The new or modified course replaces one of the original rides.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: unbearably slow scrolling of a detailed but colourless background
Sound: silent 48K version, simple 128K tune
Options: definable keys: course designer

Kikstart II is everything Code Masters's ATV Simulator should have been. The lack of sound is annoying (the Commodore 64 version has an excellent tune) but the rest of the game holds up superbly. It's playable and addictive, with good and surprisingly smooth graphics and little colour clash.
MIKE [92%]

Once you've mastered the controls and adjusted your eyes to the colour Kikstart II is quite playable. But the course designer is extremely hard to control, and it's irritating when you can't turn it off and go back to the game, though some good designs can be created. The presentation of Kikstart II is good, with an excellent title screen, and you soon get used to the slow scrolling. Yet with much more exciting racers like ATV Simulator on the market this can only be a second choice.
NICK [62%]

Mastertronic
£1.99
Reviewer: Nat Pryce

If you get your thrills astride a powerful throbbing hulk (Chance'd be a fine thing! Ed), then Kikstart could be the game for you. If, on the other hand, you consider motorbiking mildly less gripping than the SDP, it may not have quite the same appeal. But wait! I'm no great fan of motocross, but this is not a bad little game.

The object is simple: ride your bike across a scrolling course of jumps, ramps, walls, barrels and flame-throwers (!?), and do it faster than your opponent, be he human or fitted out with those neat little rubber keys.

The bike has four controls, accelerate, brake, wheelie and jump. Some obstacles can only be ridden over at low speed, others at 8 billion mph. Pulling a wheelie helps you over small bumps, but try it over anything heftier and you'll fly gracefully through the air, landing slap in the mud. So don't be too clever.

There are 24 courses, which are played five at a time (Eh? Ed). And if you get bored with these, you can easily build your own with the in-built track editor.

All sounds a mite familiar, dunnit? Well Kikstart does bear a more than passing resemblance to that Code Masters mega-hit ATV Simulator and it has many of the same addictive qualities. Unlike ATV Sim, however, Kikstart loses out on the playability front. The collision detection in particular is seriously warped: you can be riding up a ramp and suddenly sink through it for no apparent reason, and even jump while already flying through the air!

These are quibbles though. While it wins no marks for originality, Kikstart is still a smile to play. If you liked ATV, give it a try.

Label: Mastertronic
Author: Icon Design
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I was never aware that Kickstart was ever available on the Spectrum, but I suppose that it must, otherwise they would never have released Kickstart 2, or would they? They released Speed King 2, but the original was never laid under the rubber mat, so to speak. But Grim is waving his hand frantically at me, so I better stop criticising M-tronic's release style and get down to steel pins.

KS2 is, to put it in a pigeon hole, a two player, horizontally scrolling scrambling simulation. You know what scrambling is, you've probably seen it on the telly (Well I know that none of you have ever done it because you're either glued to your Spectrum or glued to SU, reading my wicked reviews). It's that weird sport where everybody rides round on undersized motorbikes (The Reliant Robins of the Honda world) trying to get over such obstacles as tyres and narrow walls. To completely reproduce the sport on a computer, it would need bike steering control as well as speed and wheelie options. No mean feat, so M-tronic have opted for a far simpler side view in which you take it as read that your on screen counterpart is perfect at steering and has left it up to you to do the rest.

The screen is split in two halves with each of the two players (or one player and the computer) taking a view. A speedometer in the corner tells you your velocity, a feature vital when attacking some of the obstacles on the 24 courses. Why speed? Well all the objects take a different tactic to cross. For example, the brick walls must be driven across very slowly but wheelies are allowed. On the other hand, you can travel as fast as you like across the picnic tables but if you try to lift your front wheel off you go.

One question that bugged me right from the word go, and is probably bugging some of the 80,000 readers out there, is, 'How does it measure up with the Commodore version?' Very well, thankyouverymuch. In fact I would go so far as to say that in feel, playability and graphical quality they are identical. But one thing is missing. I know it's missing because I have a very keen sense of hearing. Blind people normally do. (re Letters Jan issue). The Spectrum 48K version of KS2 has no sound whatsoever. Not even a peep. It's a little off-putting, not so much as a beep as you fall on your head for the teenth time Not a blip as you unsuccessfully navigate some pot holes. Not a sausage. Oh well, you can't have everything.

But, I hear you cry. is that all. No. Dillonites (Dillonites? I'm not at all sure about this - Ed), that is not all, for not only do you get 24 complete courses set over dry land during the day or night, or snow even, but you get a full spanking course designer which allows you to build, without planning permission, a complete new track. Ooooh! The designer is very easy to use and once you've created the track, you can race on it. All fer two knicker. Now that's what I call a bargain!

Mastertronic throttle up.

All the thrills and spills of dirt bike racing? Well, not quite, but it's a playable game for a short while and the course-designer means you can at least experiment with the obstacles. The 24 preset courses will not take long to master and the computer opponent is a pushover. A simple, fun game, but don't expect much in the lasting interest stakes.

Reviewer: Andy Smith

RELEASE BOX
Spec, £1.99cs, Out Now
C64/128, £1.99cs, Out Now
Amstrad, £1.99cs, Out Now

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 60/100
1 hour: 65/100
1 day: 40/100
1 week: 30/100
1 month: 20/100
1 year: 10/100