Producer: US Gold
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Ian Weatherburn

Super Cycle is the game which gives you the chance to control a finely-tuned 750cc racing machine. In fact you can have your own race track in your front room, as EPYX finally give Spectrum owners the opportunity to compete in the dangerous sport of open road racing without danger to life and limb.

Choose which of the three levels you want to compete at and wait with bated breath for the flag to go down... and you're off. Change up through the gears until you reach top speed. Don't be misled by the apparent ease of the first straight - bends appear out of nowhere.

The objective of the game is to race the course and complete it within a specified time limit. Falling off, crashing or having a blow-out wastes time. If the course is completed within the time limit, then it's on to the next track. Fail, and the game is over and it's time to start again.

The screen is split between a view of the race track and the Instrument panel of the bike. The track shows the road, bits of scenery and the other competitors. The lower half of the display shows the speedometer, rev counter and gears. Three lights in the centre of the display show which gear you're currently in. Pushing forward on the joystick and pressing fire changes up a gear - reverse the process to change down.

As in a real open road race, natural hazards have to be contended with. Other riders sometimes get in your way - they must be avoided or gently bumped out of the way. In the later levels, ice, water, oil-slicks and even lamp posts provide obstacles which must be negotiated if you're to get back to the pits in one piece. Look out for bonus flags which appear on the track, fluttering happily in the wind - hitting one bumps up the score.

The courses don't follow a straight line: tortuous bends can take a rider by surprise, but to help out, road signs indicate which way the road is to turn next and it's then up to the rider to react in time to compensate for the bend.

A high-score table records the good scores of the day. Your rider's score is also displayed on the dashboard throughout the game, along with the time remaining until the end of the race.

If you complete all the courses on a skill level then a chequered flag appears against your score - no-one opens the champagne in your honour though...

COMMENTS

Control keys: Z left, X right, D decelerate, R accelerate, 5 Fire
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Use of colour: only two colours on main part of screen, but good nevertheless
Graphics: good, well-defined characters and some good backgrounds
Sound: little more than engine noise
Skill levels: three
Screens: 8 scrolling tracks

I was expecting a really good game from US GOLD here, as Super Cycle on the C64 was absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately it has been badly converted and has lost out considerably. In normal racing games you can see the corners and bends coming up - in this there's an arrow on the side of the road so you know when to turn (tacky isn't it?). The collision detection is abysmal - you can't go anywhere near the barriers without crashing and if you time it right you can zoom straight through the other riders on the track without even wobbling. I couldn't recommend this when there are old bike racing games around at the moment for three quid that put it to shame.
BEN

Although at first sight this might seem a well designed game, it isn't. The collision routines are a bit iffy, as are the controls: you can crash into an obstacle when you are nowhere new it, (and drive through other motorbikes) and the bike stops dead sometimes at the start of each race. Most of the races are too easy by far, and the only way that you get killed is by falling asleep while playing- which could quite easily happen. This is not the best racing game that I've played, and definitely not the most realistic. It will sell well, but I don't think it is worth the money.
PAUL

Oh, wow. The Commodore version (oops, I was told not to mention that) is probably the best race game ever written. The Spectrum version is bad by comparison. In its own right it is reasonable, but it's spoilt by lots of bugs (no gear change round comers, being able to wrap around the screen when cornering, and so on) and the fact that it is far too easy to play. On the OTHER version, you could get a very challenging game on the first level, and run the risk of getting knocked off. On the Spectrum version, I made it easily (ahh, modesty!) through the first half dozen levels (and more) without falling off once. As far as being sufficiently realistic to warrant insurance, as the advert claims, then that is plainly ridiculous. Overall, Super Cycle comes a long way behind the best Spectrum racer, and is not a game I would recommend.
MIKE

£2.99
Kixx

Climb into your riding leathers and Jam that crash helmet onto your head 'cos we are going open road racing with Super Cycle. The rules are simple, just stay on the large and very powerful bike long enough to complete a course. Each race is held in different locations some in the desert, others in the city and there is even one course where you can see Cape Canaveral in the distance. As with most race games time is the enemy, a set limit is allowed to complete the course - fail to beat it and it's the end of the race. At the beginning there's only the other riders to worry about, but as the game goes on ice, roadworks and oil slicks etc all add to the challenge of reaching the finishing line in one piece. A fairly nice looking game, spoilt by being too easy with lousy collision detection.

Then: 63% Now: 53%

US Gold
£8.95

Hang On! BrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRmmmmmm! Eeeeeee! Brrrrrr...

It's incredible, really, what playing race games does to serious computer journalists. I can't help myself! I'm a sucker for anything like this, 'cos if it's got some wheels and goes vroom I'm all for it.

Motorbike games are a little bit thin on the ground these days. This one was spawned, it seems to me, as a coin-op conversion of a game called Hang On, a spanking little game in the arcades last year.

As a cycle race it's alright, with all the usual bells and whistles - gears, Xmas tree start lights... you know the drill. Its a bit lacking in the excitement department, with no real goal, like a highscore table, or league ladder. You just cycle as fast as you can until your time runs out, which seems a bit of a pointless exercise to me.

On top of this, there appear to be a few bugs in the game. Get this - after swerving off the track and off the screen I then appeared on the other side of the screen! Weird! Another strange effect - when I hit a post at the side of the track, I stopped dead and fell off. I was completely stationary. So why did the opponent bikes whizz past me like I was overtaking them? Double weird!

A peculiar little offering, and not one of US Gold's best.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

They're certainly cheap, but are they cheerful? Marcus Berkmann rootles around in the YS Lucky Dip...

Kix
£2.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

It's probably unfair to criticise a game that has been superseded by later better titles but why should that stop me having some fun? Actually Super Cycle isn't bad, but since Enduro Racer this sort of standard motorcycle racing game with all the usual features - smallish sprites, dreary old roads with no foliage or scenery to speak of, and no bumps or rocks in sight - has become more than a little tiresome. Snore city, in fact. What's worse is that there have also been 345,000,000 identical games released since Super Cycle first appeared three years ago and impressed us all. Some game survive, some don't, and at three quid this now looks overpriced.

Run it again and again and again - there's nothing like a good race game. You can always beat that world record just once more, as DOMINIC HANDY and MIKE DUNN discover when they go into...

Super Cycle
US Gold#

63% Issue 37

MIKE: Another bike racer in the oh-so-popular vein: zoom round the course ASAP, and avoid the other riders. Not difficult. Unfortunately, US Gold made this far too easy to play, because there's simply no challenge in the first few levels; it's even possible to wrap around the sides of the screen when you corner!
48%

DOMINIC: What a failure this turned out to be. Second time round it doesn't seem so bad though - mainly because the hype has died down, and everyone's forgotten about the excellent Commodore version. Bouts of boredom creep in rather too regularly, and because it's still at such a high price Super Cycle doesn't look too good against the budget opposition.
47%

Label: Epyx
Price: £7.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Cranking the machine beneath me up to 140 mph I broke out of the bend and rocketted away from the other riders, up the long straight. The surrounding scenery blurred into coloured smudges as the bike hurled itself forward, stretching every cylinder to breaking point.

I reckoned I was doing really well, because it takes a fair bit of imagination to get that excited about Super Cycle.

The game was initially programmed on the Commodore in the States by Epyx, the people who brought you the splendid Games series of sports simulations. Now it's been converted across by US Gold and, compressed from a multi-load 64K program to a single-load 48K.

And as might be expected, it's a disaster.

Not really a surprise then to find the conversion's been done by Ian Weatherburn who's responsible for other dodos like Ocean's Highlander and it's a Knockout.

Super Cyle is really Pole Position on bikes.

Finding yourself on the grid, flanked on either side by a mysterious rider - looking exactly like you - the clock begins to tick, and you're off.

"Racing has never been so furious" burbles the text. Rubbish! Even more ridiculous is the statement: "Push it over the limit, and you crash." it's almost impossible to crash. You can ride right through other players without any fear of even being bumped a bit. The only way I found to crash was to ride straight at one of the big signs on the side of the road. This is not the mark of a good game is it?

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: US Gold
PRICE: £7.95

Vrooom! If TT Racer was too complicated for you or if Speed King was too wimpish for you, just check out the Speccy conversion of Super Cycle. It's brill!

It's the home micro version of the arcade smash Hang On! Wheel to wheel bike racing against the clock on a variety of demanding tracks.

The screen shows your bike and the smoothly scrolling track. Beneath the main play window are your instruments - speedometer, rev-counter, points scored, elapsed time and which gear you are in.

Each track has a time limit. Beat it and you get a bonus score based on the number of seconds left. As you progress through the tracks obstacles like puddles, ice pools, road works and bumps begin to appear. The further you go the more obstacles you have to negotiate.

Riding the bike is fairly easy - but watch those gear changes it's crucial to get them right. Get up to 8,000 revs before you hit the fire button to change gear.

There are three skill levels - the first is a bit of a doddle frankly, treat it as a training mode, especially if you've played the C64 version.

Talking of that 64 version you'll find the Speccy a bit slower - but this doesn't make the game any less playable.

Background graphics change so you get the impression you're racing across the desert or over water on an elevated track. Race through storms or frozen wastes.

Unlike the Commodore version the Spectrum games loads up in one go - but you don't get the option to change the colour of your rider or his bike.

Super Cycle is an excellent conversion. If you like race games you won't find better than this on the Spectrum.