Gremlin
£14.99

The latest game from the Gremlin garage is Super Cars. The aim is to complete all the races in a season and win as much money as possible. The three supercars available are the Taraco Neorder Turbo, the Vaug Interceptor Turbo and the Retron Parsec Turbo. There are nine races per season: they can be played in any order but they increase in difficulty, so my advice is to start on track one (wimpo - Ed).

You start the game with a 1.6 Taraco and £5000 in cash, your first port of call is the garage. Here a range of extras are available (for a price), including power steering, front and rear missiles, turbo chargers and high speed kit. There is also a car showroom where more powerful cars can be purchased.

Choose one of the nine tracks, viewed from overhead, to race around and prepare for battle against the other three cars. Track one is fairly easy to survive, but later on torturous bends, water and oil spillages pop up. Keep your eyes on the bottom of the screen to check the damage meters and fuel gauge. Crashing into other cars or the sides of the tracks lower the engine's power, bodywork and tyre gauges. Fuel is glugged at a vast rate regardless. The garage is the place to go for repairs and fuel, but make sure you have enough money.

You need to complete the race in third position or better to survive. Rewards you receive are £20,000 for first position, £10,000 for second, and so on down the scale. Survive all nine tracks and you're awarded a £75000 bonus and moved onto the next season's racing.

Presentation on Super Cars is up to Gremlin's high standards with the choice of three car types, the garage options and more. Sadly the playability suffers, mainly due to the limited number of track layouts and the amount of computer-controlled cars in each race. On the first couple of tracks it's all too easy to finish the race first, so extras can quickly be purchased in preparation for later levels. A neat game for unskilled racers - the real hard nuts should go for Lotus.

MARK [75%]

Gremlin seem to have gone car crazy over Christmas. First Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge and now this! The first game was a little more impressive, though. This is just a Super Sprint clone with nothing much going on at all. Your car crawls around the track, with only three others to race against. Most of the time you can race around as if you were the only one there! As you can tell, the main game is very boring. Things are cheered up a bit by the attractive garage, car selection and introduction screens though, and there are some groovy tunes. All the graphics on the cars when you bring up their technical specs are excellent. Super Cars is a reasonable attempt at a racing game but it won't hold your interest for long.
NICK [76%]

Gremlin
£9.99 cass/£14.99 disk
Reviewer: Matt Bielby

These Supersprint-style overhead-view racing things seem to be jumping back in vogue at the moment - which is okay by me as they're usually quite fun (if undemanding) little things. And, I'm happy to say for Gremlin, Supercars is more fun (and possibly even a tad more demanding) than most. It's good to see their run of good, solid products continue - they've not had a bad game (with the possible exception of Impossamole) for ages now.

So anyway, Supercars. Unlike your standard model Supersprint clone, where each course is the size of the screen and the cars that tootle round them are really quite tiddly, Supercars scrolls. And very smoothly it scrolls too, as the camera follow your really rather decently-sized and detailed Taraco Neoroder (or Retron Parsec or Vaug interceptor - who comes up with these names?) around the track.

Each circuit (and there are nine to choose from, of various degrees of difficulty) is made up of a combination of straights, corners, bridges and tunnels - the tunnels are particularly disorientating, as you can't see your car until it comes out the other side. The circuits are pretty too - they seem to be made out of grey concrete and sort of semi-sunk below ground level, so you get shadows cast onto the track by the side walls, bridges, bollards and anything else you could reasonably expect to cast a shadow. Really, apart from the lack of detailing and the flat colours, this is every bit as attractive as the 16-bit versions.

The aim of Supercars is to earn as much money as possible by winning (or at least getting a decent placing) in a series of nine races. Complete a season (which means you have to come in the top three of every race) and you get a level code for the next series of races, where you'll be able to spend the money you've earned on upgrades for your car (or even on a new model altogether). Be careful though - as the levels get more difficult you'll find you've got more opponents to cope with, and there are more hazards (like oil, water or mud) on the track.

Keep an eye on the four gauges at the bottom of the screen too - if you ruin your tyres (by skidding), your body (by hitting things) or your engine (by staying at maximum speed) - or indeed if you merely run out of fuel - the game will end. (It'd be best to take a trip to the garage before any of them get too low, wouldn't you say?)

Ah, yes. The garage. Not only can you repair your car here, you can buy loads of rather spiffing optional extras too - how about power steering (for tighter and faster cornering), a turbo charger (for acceleration) or a high-speed kit (especially useful on the long straights)? You can also get better brakes, spin assist (which will point your car in the right direction if you spin out on oil), side armour (so you can ram other cars) and front and rear missiles (!) for blowing other cars away (though you can only use these once per race).

And that's it really - all these extras are really just the icing on the cake of what is really a very simple (but very well put-together) little game. The super-smooth scrolling really does deserve a lot of praise (well done, you good piece of scrolling you) as do the graphics and (particularly) just the feel of the thing. The cars might not behave exactly as real cars would (you can bounce them of walls like dodgem cars, for instance, though it's not really advisable) but they respond well to your commands, are nicely animated, and the computer keeps a good track of where they all are and what they're doing at any one time. It's nice that you can watch the tail enders drive under a bridge even as you're zooming over the top of it.

All in all, great fun - a simple idea for a game and executed more or less flawlessly. Ens, what else can I say? Well done.

REPLAY

Re-pla, vt To play again. n

That section in YS which covers re-released games. (We just thought you'd like to know.)

GBH
£3.99
0742 753423
Reviewer: Stuart Campbell

Super Sprint was always a great game, but personally I always felt there was something missing. Collecting all those spanners and buying better tyres with them and stuff (couldn't you just see the fascinating bartering going on in the garage? "Look, I really fancy those new supergrip tyres, but I haven't got any money"..."Oh, tell you what, just give me those four spanners you picked up off the track earlier on and we'll call it a deal...") was all very well, but didn't you just long sometimes to forget about all that clever driving and overtaking stuff and just blow the opposition out of the way with a well-aimed missile? I think we all did, but now we can make that dream a reality with (pause for dramatic fanfare) Supercars!

Supercars is essentially exactly the same game as Super Sprint (or indeed Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's Super Off Road Racer, reviewed in this very column by this very reviewer just a few short months ago), but with a few bits added and a few bits taken away. The bits that have been added include massive tracks which scroll around the screen, over 26 different stages (ie there are 27), and a cash-win system whereby you get loads of money for winning races which you can spend on repairing your car and buying lots of sexy new doobries for it, including the aforementioned missiles. Oh, and you also get music while you drive, but unfortunately half the channels out out every time you skid round a bend, which makes it a bit annoying after a while (ie 30 seconds), although it's fun in a Paul Oakenfold dub remix kind of way.

The bits that have been taken away, mainly, are the bits which involve more than one person having fun at the same time. Unlike Super Sprint and Super Off-Road, Supercars is a one-player-only game, which means that once you get bored with just racing round and round the rather samey-looking and increasingly-repetitive tracks by yourself, there's nothing much you can do to extend the game's life. Still, it's good fun while it lasts and at four quid you're not getting ripped off. Try Super Off Road first, though.

Label: Gremlin
Price: £10.99 Cass 48K/128K 1 Load
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

As Murray Walker would say, "THIS is JUST what the WORLD needs! ANOTHER car RACING game. AS IF we hadn't ALREADY played SEVERAL DOZEN of them, all EXACTLY the SAME!"

BUT, hold on Murray, let Jackie get a world in edgeways. "Hoots, Supercars is no bad, ye ken, wahay, and I should know, the noo, I was the world champion back in nineteen-hundred and twenty six."

OK, there isn't much we haven't seen before in Gremlin's sports car challenge, but it's all rather well done and for a change the setup screens aren't let down by poor racing routines, and/or vice versa.

On the opening screen you get a choice of three cars including super models like the Retron Parsec Turbo. Click on one to get a full technical run-down - dig those sexy acceleration figures! Drool over the maximum speed! Barf when you see the price!

The only way to afford the better cars is to win races. Take a trip to the Garage where Sexy Sandra the Spare Parts Slut will sell you necessaries such as turbo chargers, power steering, anti-spin units, and stuff you can't get at Kwik Fit like missiles and side armour.

Leave the garage and choose a track from the nine available, and the race is on. The tracks become trickier and twistier as time goes on, but there isn't anything silly like landmines or space aliens to complicate issues.

The graphics for the races are dead good: the small monochrome cars all look pretty samey, but the roadways are detailed and realistic, animation is decent and the multi-directional scrolling is smooth. As the count-down bleeps you rev your engine, and when the light turns green it's full pelt for the finish line: counters at the bottom of the screen show your speed, position (you are usually matched against three or four opponents). lap count, and status for Engine, Bodywork, Gas and Tyres.

Steering control is pretty responsive, and though you never seem to achieve a great impression of speed, there's real skill involved in steering tight around the corners.

Since you can bash and blast your opponents as well as trying to outsteer them, a quick trigger-finger is as necessary as a firm hand on the wheel.

If you win a round you get a little victory ceremony with race statistics, your dosh count goes up and you can visit the Sales office, where a man who appears to be eating fish and chips will offer to sell you a better car, or tell you to take a hike if you don't have enough dosh. You can also return to the garage to repair the degradation done to your tyres, bodywork, engine and fuel supply.

That's just about all there is to it; the music's super, the graphics and animation are fine, and the gameplay's quite absorbing. But, to be fair, it isn't a particularly difficult game - I managed to win race after race without any real effort - and if you want slam-bang action you might prefer Badlands or Iron Mike's Off-Road Racing. Supercars is worth a spin, though.

Label: GBH
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £3.99 Tape
Reviewer: Steve Keen

There are good cars, there are bad cars, and there are super cars! There are good games, there are bad games, and there are super games! But is Super Cars a Super Game? (Confusing eh?)

To cut a long story short, in Super Cars you play a budding racing driver (or at least his car). The game consists of nine stomach-turning races against three other opponents all out there to win the championships for themselves. They will stop at nothing to knock you into the sides of the track, smash up your rear bumper and generally make a mess of you and your car. Starting off with a pretty basic set of wheels, as you win more races and gain more money you can eventually afford to splash out on a few 'optional extras' or even upgrade to a more deluxe model motor at the local sales office.

Super Cars allows you to attempt any of the nine race tracks in any order your heart desires, although they do get progressively harder, with more obstacles like mud, water and oil spillages standing in your way. The graphics are very basic - the only colour being the grass verges. However, the car sprites are crispy clear, tracks are very well designed and controls are very sensitive and simple.

Races are viewed from above, each one consisting of five laps of the track, with plenty of twists, turns and tunnels. You have to be one of the first three past the finishing line to be allowed to continue to another race, which isn't so hard seeing there are only four contestants racing. What is hard though is trying not to skid so much that your tyres burst and crash so much that your car explodes!

Super Cars is very addictive - you just have to complete that final lap, and if you don't, you'll be trying and trying until you do. Although this is a simple looking game, there's plenty in it to keep you coming back for more.

GARTH:
Personally, I prefer the 3D type of driving sims - they feel more realistic and are better to control. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. The graphics might be simple and the sound might be annoying and repetitive but there's enough action in this little beauty for it to come highly recommended.