Producer: Players
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Paul Griffiths and Andrew Severn

Your bottom's just above the water line sitting in a canoe, so grab your paddle and get ready to go when the green light's on. The course record is your target in Players's simulation, and you've only got a handful of minutes to beat it.

You can choose from tour courses - not simple little streams, but wild waters, full of hazards such as rocks, banks and islands. All these must be avoided and the canoe guided downstream through a series of gates, constructed of pairs of hanging posts.

Catching one of these gates can impale you helplessly while others go on to beat the record - and, adding injury to insult, touching a gate pole or missing the gate entirely gives you penalty points.

And you can capsize if you're not careful; then frantic paddling in all directions is the only way to get out of a damp, damp situation.

But it's all too easy to use up your energy by strenuous paddling. Watch the clock at the side of the screen, but also keep a careful eye on your energy level. Good paddling!

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: well-defined, monochromatic, simple
Options: choice of four courses

Riding The Rapids is a well-presented little mover, but it's so simple and unrealistic it soon gets boring. The graphics are fine - very simple, but effective - but there's hardly any gameplay. The inlay promises the action 'will have your pulse racing as fast as the current', but if you leave your canoe it just drifts downstream, hardly creating the impression of a fast-moving mountain river.
MIKE [45%]

I've done plenty of canoeing, but never any like this. Never have I been grounded by poles hanging above the water, never have I been grounded by waves, and I certainly have never been able to dump the nose of my canoe three feet inland! Yet all these are hazards of canoeing, according to Riding The Rapids. The controls are confusing, too, with Q taking you down the screen and A taking you up - that is, if you can remember which way you are facing. Riding The Rapids is difficult and unrealistic, so give me the real river any day.
BYM [65%]

Players
£1.99
Reviewer: Tony Worrall

At first sight Riding The Rapids looks like a Code Masters simulator, but don't be fooled. This game is about as wet as the North Sea.

Whizzy title aside, it's really just a very simple canoe race game. The player has a limited amount of time to negotiate a set number of floating gates, and reach the finish line.

Unfortunately, there are several gameplay bugs here that make it silly to play. I found it impossible to capsize my dinghy, no matter how I tried! Surely being soaked is a key part of the sport. The energy meter seems to be a complete waste of time, and I always thought it was not strictly on to paddle through solid ground! Wet wet wet! The graphics aren't up to much and the sound effects (no music) are drippy to say the least.

Still, Riding The Rapids is playable in a strange sort of way, or so I found. Beating the time limit can be quite a challenge if you keep finding yourself high and dry on some mud bank. And the inclusion of an easy-to-use course designer does add much needed value to the package.

On the whole, though, it's not to be recommended. Only buy it if you enjoy simple soggy fun, 'cos that's all you'll get with this!

Label: Players
Author: Paul Griffiths
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

In Riding the Rapids, you get to paddle a kayak down four mountain rivers, each more hazardous than it's predecessor. The idea is to steer and paddle at the same time, avoid the side of the river and the various rocks and small islands, and on top of that you have to travel through the flags in the right way and get through the course in the fastest time possible.

Graphically the game has not much to offer. A sprinkling of dots for a rock here, another sprinkling of dots to show the bank there. Control is easy to get used to and the courses can provide a challenge in places. My main gripe though is the speed it is so slow. The old New Generation game - Shoot the Rapids was tons better.