Mastertronic Plus
£2.99

My ultimate fantasy! To smash up a Porsche 959! No, I think I'll stick to Metros for now - it's cheaper. The Super Stock Car sponsors must be pretty loaded as they supply you, Rick Radial, with a choice of four cars to take around the hair-raising corners and over the finish line of the stock car courses. The cars featured are a Lamborghini Countach, a Ferrari Testarossa, a Lotus Esprit and a Porsche 959. For real speed demons there's also a Robin Reliant Kitten!

Very reminiscent of old CodeMasters games, Car's graphics are colourful and well drawn, but the way cars torn corners is irritating. There are three stages of animation: one, the car faces to the left, two, the car is on a 45 degree diagonal and, three, the car faces down the screen. This takes a lot of getting used to and the jerkiness spoils the game.

One good thing is that when you get fed up with driving on the same old courses you can access the course designing section. You can now make each course dead easy se you can get around it without, wrapping your car around a lamp post. However, this is still very basic car racing which won't keep anyone playing for long.

RICH PELLEY dons his washing-up gloves and prepares to take on those oh-so-murky depths of...

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Mastertronic Plus
£2.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

Stock car racing's a bit of a spooky thing really, isn't it, sports-fans? Lots of people driving around a dirty-old racetrack getting all hot and flustered and crashing their fine automobiles into walls, fences and (heaven forbid) other people. Strange. Every fancied a go yourself? I have, but for some reason my dad won't let me borrow his car. (And I ask nicely too.) Oh well, looks like it's time to bring out Super Stock Car and try our grubby little hands at these activities in the 'comfort' of our own home.

The idea is to complete five circuits of a track (within a time limit) and get onto the next one. It's more of a race than a smashup - you can ram other cars and they'll spin around for a bit (but inflicting no permanent damage). The screen scrolls to keep up with you as you go. so you don't get to see all of the track at once as in. say, Supersprint (yes, that again). This has the welcome effect of making the thing all that harder - especially when you get onto new unseen tracks. The controls are a bit mad - you sort of rotate around instead of turning (most confusing) and the graphics are a bit chunky, but colourful all the same. Overall, it's still playable and good fun, especially as there's the added 'bonus' of a built-in course editor thingy to design your own fiendishly fiendish tracks with. Hours of fun.

THE COMPLETE YS GUIDE TO DRIVING GAMES

It's strange but true - normally courteous YS readers tend to turn into homicidal maniacs once they get behind the wheel of a Spectrum. We sent JONATHAN DAVIES, who still hasn't managed to get that wretched helmet off, to find out why.

It's an expensive business, driving. Not only do you have to hand out piles of dosh to actually get a car, but there are loads of 'hidden costs' thrown into the bargain' too. For a start, you've got to get it insured (in case you crash), which means serious sponds for your average Spectrum owner Then there's road tax, servicing, MOTs, petrol, all sorts of things. And, if you want to keep up with the latest fashions, you'll want to purchase a few 'extras' as well, ranging from simple '-TURBO-' stickers for the back window to alloys, buckets and twin cams. And they all mean spending lots and lots of money.

So wouldn't it be nice if you could get your Spectrum to sort of 'pretend' was a car, allowing you to zoom about to your heart's content for minimal outlay instead? Well, actually you can! Yes, all you need to do is buy a suitable driving game, load it up and you've got yourself a set of wheels.

It'll be almost exactly the same as driving a real car except that you can crash as much as you like without having to worry about your no-claims bonus. And you'll be able to choose from all the latest posh sports cars like Porsches, Ferraris and Lotuses and drive them as far and as fast as you like without having to splash out on a drop of petrol! (In fact, because driving games are so much cheaper and more practical than real cars, it is predicted that by the year 2012 the motorcar will have become obsolete, replaced by the driving game.) The only trouble with all this is that it's a bit hard to pick up birds with a 48K Spectrum.

JUST WHAT, EXACTLY, IS A DRIVING GAME?

Mmm, knew we'd have to get round to this sometime. Well, I've had a think and come up with the following spec...

- It's got to have either a car, a motorbike or a lorry in it.

- That means no bicycles, boats, jet-skis, tanks or anything like that.

- And no skateboards either. They're crap.

Seems simple enough. It means we're including Grand Prix-type games (where you just race against other cars) and shooting ones (where you zap them) but not similar-looking ones that don't have cars, bikes or lorries in (like boat ones). Okay? Phew. I never thought it would be quite so easy.

SO HOW ABOUT THINGS LIKE ARMY MOVES?

Oh cripes. Look, just shurrup. will you, whoever you are. No, Army Moves is out, I'm afraid. It's rubbish anyway.

So let's take a look at a few examples, eh? It's worth noting that, where driving games are concerned, the ratio of crap ones to good ones is a lot higher than with other types of game (apart from football games, of course). So you can't be too careful.

RATINGS

The YS Ratings System? You don't want that old thing. No sir, over here we have the brand-new top-of-the-range 1990 model. It's turbo-charged, fuel-injected, 16-valve, super-cooled and has a full X-pack (with droop snoot). And spots. You'll be doing yourself a favour.

DRIVE
It's no good having a driving game that seems to be simulating an FSO or something. You want real power, a feeling of being at one with the road and all that sort of thing. Control responses, speed etc are all taken into account here.

VISIBILITY
Assuming you remember to clean all the dead leaves and bird turds off the windscreen before you set out, what's the view like? A thinly-veiled graphics category, in other words, but jolly important all the same.

ROADHOLDING
It may seem to have everything, but once you've set off, and you've been on the road for a while, do you relish every second that you're behind the wheel? Or do you want to keep stopping at the services? Or perhaps you'd rather just take the bus instead, eh?

FIRST-OFF-AT-THE-LIGHTS FACTOR
A competitive edge is most important where driving's concerned, both in real life and on the Speccy. So do the other cars put up a decent fight, or do they just seem to be part of the scenery (if, indeed, there is any)?

DRIVING GAMES FOR THE BUDDING LADA-OWNER

As with all tried-and-tested formulae, driving games are big news in the world of the cheapie. Let's have a look at a few, and maybe try ad work in the odd drive-a-hard-bargain gag.

SUPER STOCK CAR
Mastertronic

This is pretty identical to Rallycross Sim too. Only it's the worst of the three, with awful controls and cars that are far too big and unmanoeuvrable to dirve properly. By all means take a peek at the first two, but 'steer' clear of this one.

Label: Mastertronic
Price: £2.99
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

I always thought Stock Cars were supposed to be beaten up Ford Cortinas with all the glass taken out, covered in stickers saying "Castrol GTX 20/80 is Good For You", but in this Mastertronic effort the smash-'em-up action takes place in the most gleamaceous of sporting fantasies, including Lamborghini, Ferrari, Lotus and Porsche. What's goin' on?!?

The idea is that you, as stock car stinker Rick Radial, have to smash, bash and outclass your opponents racing around six circuits. The scene's viewed from above, and the screen-scrolling and animation are pleasingly smooth, although the actual size of the nicely-detailed cars seems to be too big for the scale of the track. This means that you have to develop very precise control as you hurtle around the bends, because there's really no such thing as a long straight!

One or two players can race, while the other three or two cars are computer-controlled. It doesn't seem to make much difference which car you choose, but as you'd expect the computer's cars are rather good at smashing you off the track, blocking your way and zooming around the bends with mathematical precision, while you will find it much harder to barge them, outrace them or negotiate the track with such skill. The most annoying bit is that if you get a bash, your car spins out of control and often as not ends up facing the wrong way, while this doesn't seem to apply to your opponents.

You have to complete five laps on each track within a set time to progress to the next, and if you finish them all, you go back to the start with a shorter time limit. A plan of the track showing the position of each car, along with various timers and graphix bits, appears on the right hand side of the screen.

But that's not all there is to it! Press R on the opening screen and you access a track-designing routine; you can create your own three-course Cup event by editing the existing tracks, or simply modify the default tracks. The system's very simple - just use the moving window to select the modules you want to stick on to the track, and click to add them to the end of the last piece.

On the whole, Malcolm, this is more than just another racey-racey-round-in-circles game, so get yer paintwork scraped and give it a go.

Mastertronic Plus
Spectrum/C64/Amstrad £2.99

You are Rick Radial (more like Richard Head), the meanest man on the stock car circuit. As one-time champ, you've got plenty of people willing to sponsor you, so you can choose from one of four of the meatiest sports cars going. After choosing your super lovely diamond motor, you have to race five laps around the track within the qualifying time. Winning means progression to the next track.

Quite frankly, so what? Alright, the graphics are nice, the sound is ho-hum (buzz, buzz, buzz), but the gameplay is far too samey all the way through. The opportunity for banging (fnerk) up a Testarossa or a Lamborghini is fun, but everything seems to get rather boring after a while. If you want a racer, Super Stock Car ain't bad for the price, its just a little repetitive, even with the addition of a course designer.