US Gold/Ice Developments
£9.99 cass, £14.99 disk

Here it is, the sequel to the mega coin-op machine Out Run. It stars the same Ferrari owning chap, who's traded his Testarossa for an F-40, but not the beautiful blonde - true love! The wild duo decide to show a Porsche 959 owner what a real car is, and a furious race across the States will do nicely.

Four four-stage races are agreed upon, New York to LA. The police hear about this highly illegal race and are keen to stop it. Difficult when your car is capable of quite frightening speeds, but then you do have to reach the end of each stage with the time limit. If the timer is ticking down on you alarmingly, a whack of the fire button gets the turbo charger to rocket the car along nicely (G-force is an optional extra).

Once you've survived the first four stages you enter the garage and have the chance to upgrade your motor. But don't be downgraded personally by losing your girlie to the Porsche owner.

Turbo Out Run is a great game in the arcade, and on the computer isn't too bad. The sprites are nicely drawn, with the F-40 particularly striking. But the backgrounds are more than a little sparse. I'm not asking for a cluttered screen, but a few more roadside objects would have given the player a better sense of speed. The other slight moan I have is the road not being clearly marked: several times I was caught out by a sneaky bend and ended up crashing. This isn't the best racing game I've seen this winter (that honour goes to Chase HQ): I feel US Gold could have done better.

MARK [77%]

What can I say about Turbo Out Run that wasn't said in the review of the original Out Run? The game is almost identical. The only difference is that the graphics have changed slightly and you can now smash your way through road blocks and bump over logs in the road. There is also a new car upgrade section that gives you the choice of special turbo, hi-grip tyres or high powered engine. To tell you the truth I didn't notice much difference in performance when I got them anyway. The same old problem of new sections of road not joining together properly has been kept in Turbo Out Run, which is a pity, and the multi-load is still a real annoyance. I wouldn't say that this is the most realistic car racing game around: I mean, the car is so big you can hardly see what is coming up ahead. If you were a big fan of the original then buy this, because it's more of the same.
NICK [81%]

US Gold
£9.99 cass
Reviewer: David Wilson

There've been a whole a load of driving games coming out of late, haven't there, Spec-chums? This one's US Gold's offering and, basically, it's an update of the original rolling-road-racing coin-op hit, OutRun. But guess what!? There's no Big Red Testie!! Instead you've got a spanky Ferrari F-40 convertible. (Actually neither car is red on the Speccy, they're both monochrome.) So clamber aboard, my little co-drivers, and let's take a gander at this turbo-charged update. Vroom! Vroom!

Apart from the actual car itself. there are also a lot of other changes here. You get to race across the whole of the US this time, instead of just California, meeting all kinds of weather and road conditions like snowy mountains, sun-baked deserts and just plain rainy cityscapes. Not really the ideal convertible driving conditions, I'm sure you'll agree! The other main differences are the addition of puddles, 'sleeping policemen', those temporary road barriers for you to drive through, and not forgetting, of course, the fashionable turbo! Usage of this 'tool' is limited by the fact that the car engine overheats if used excessively - keep a close eye on that temperature gauge! Oh, and you can bash the other cars on the road too, but make sure you don't knock yourself off!!

If I hadn't played Chase HQ first and seen what can be achieved with a Speccy arcade driving game I might not have been so disappointed with this, but then again maybe it wouldn't have made that much difference. It is fast and it is slick, and some of the graphical bits, like nudging the Porsches (heh heh) and driving through the barriers, are nicely rendered, but on the whole I felt let down. Your main sprite is nice and large, but your viewpoint is more that of the car behind rather than from slightly overhead. This means, in effect, that when something is right in front of you it's sometimes almost completely obscured by your own car sprite! What's more, say your car was a Bburago 1/18 scale Ferrari, well, the other cars would be made by Matchbox! I mean, when you collide with the other cars (hem hem) you seem to be twice their size.

I suspected the accuracy of the collision detection on occasion too, but liked the way the roadside banners flew into the air when you bamboozled them. Crunch into something more substantial and you'll see one of two sequences. Either your car will somersault down the road or it'll perform a 360° spin. Both of these are nice ideas but are executed in a rather jerky fashion, and when you see the car's side-on view both the passengers seem to have disappeared! Further, the only difference I noticed on firing a turbo was that of a tiny puff of smoke appearing at the back of the car. There was very little impression of speed at all.

Reach the checkpoint and you'll have to multiload the next stage. There are 16 (count 'em - 16!) stages, and that means 16 loads! I actually timed myself on completing the first two stages and it took me about one minute and 20 seconds. That's just over a minute's gameplay before each multiload section. Groan! Fail to complete a stage and you've a few credits to try again. Otherwise it's back to the start.

When a game ends you see a colourful map of America showing your route, the start and finish, and just how much ground you've covered. In between all this, the action might be enough to excite road-racing freaks, but, well. I was disappointed. US Gold chose not to release OutRun Europa after it secured the licence to the more up-to-date Turbo. From what we saw of Europa, we thought it might have been a better game. Such is life.

REPLAY

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Kixx
£3.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

One thing that can indubitably be said about the Outrun series is that they've got a lot better - Outrun was crap and Outrun Europa was pretty brilliant. Turbo Outrun, the middle one, was somewhere in between. Average, if you like. Or quite good. That sort of thing.

What you may not know is the actual differences between Turbo and the highly acclaimed original. Well, I'll tell you, this time you race across the entire US from New York to Los Angeles. Along the way there are varying weather conditions in the form of snowy mountains, sunny deserts and rainy cities. There are also road barriers, puddles and bumps. And, erm, that's about it really.

Apart of course from the Turbo boost that can allegedly get you through the levels. But the overall increase in speed is so suspiciously small that I'm going to be ruthless and complain. It's not too slow, but it's jerky and rather hard on the eyes - not very Chase HQ-like if you ask me. Another grumble is that quite often your own car sprite obscures the other cars in front of you. This is very frustrating.

Turbo Outrun is cheap and fun, but it's also a jerky, repetitive multi-load.

Label: US Gold
Author: In House
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various

It's here! Burnin' rubber and wheel spinning off the grid, Turbo Outrun is the latest US Gold conversion of the Sega coin-op of the same name, which itself is the follow-up to the hugely successful Outrun arcade machine.

This time around you've upgraded your tyred (aghh) old Ferrari Testarossa to a brand spanking new Ferrari F40, complete with auto and manual gears and turbo boosters to help you burn off the opposition as you hurtle across America with no regard to the Highway Code or any other road users. And burn you must, for there's a strict time limit to each of 16 stages and if you don't reach the next checkpoint before your timer runs out, then your chances of taking the checkered flag are nil.

As you race from New York to Los Angeles, you pass through many American states, each featuring its own landscape and vehicles on the road. Every level is loaded separately, which works fine on disk, with only a couple of second's pause as the next section is loaded in, but the 48K Spectrum will have to load in each section whilst 128K machines will load a few stages at a time making the multi load less of a pain in the driving seat.

The race opens as a straight hell-for-leather blast across America for your fickle girlfriend (who wubs wou) and you (who probably wubs your wonderful set of wheels.) You must complete each stage within the time limit to advance.

Also, there's a wee sub plot going on involving the attentions of your girlie - if you complete 4 stages but lose to the Porshe 959 in each stage, then your girlie will get out of your car and bugger off with the macho mutha in the Porshe.

So, if you're not doing so well, it might be useful to activate the turbo boosters via the fire button and send the car rocketing down the road. But take care when you do this - too much boost results in the engine overheating, indicated by a bar at the top of the screen, and you have to ease off while it cools down.

At strategic points along the route there are garages where you're given the choice of a hi-powered engine, extra turbo boosters or hi-grip tyres to help you attain even higher speeds. The big problem is that you're only allowed one item per stop, so choose wisely.

So much was expected of Turbo Outrun and most of the goods have been delivered. The only gripe I have is that it very difficult to see cars directly ahead of you and so it's necessary to career all over the road in an attempt not to run into anything in front which makes the whole exercise annoyingly more difficult than it needs to be.

JIM SEZ: 80%"Turbo Outrun is a vast improvement on it's predecessor. It's by no means perfect, but one of this year's better driving games.".