Players Software
£2.99

'Take part in one of the most exciting motor sports known to man!' boasts the inlay. 'Accurate realism!' it yells. Well, what a load of hogwash. Kart racing may be an exciting motor spoil in real life but certainly not on the Spectrum.

The game consists of tracks packed full of light corners and chicanes all drawn in a reasonable way. The cars that zoom around them are all clash free except one, you. As your car is red, whenever you go near the edge of the track or slide off onto the grass you get a large red splodge instead of a kart! It's not as if this were a rare occurence: the way the kart skids each time you attempt to turn a corner ensures you spend more time off than on the race track, especially if you were using the nitro at the time.

Picking up the icons left lying on each track are helpful if you make it to the next stage of the race: clocks for extra time, spanners to repair damage and bottles to give you extra nitro power. The slightest touch of another kart and you both exploit into tiny pieces. Turbo Kart Racer is a game that I definitely won't be playing again in a hurry.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

RICH PELLEY and JON PILLAR are at it again and they want us to join on. Oo-er. (So bring along an extra lightbulb just to be safe.)

Players
£2.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

If there's one thing more annoying than waking up in the middle of the night, thinking it's Christmas, getting your entire family out of bed and dragging them all downstairs to open your presents, only to find that it is in fact the middle of summer (which happened to me once - most embarrassing), it's got to be this Turbo Kart Racer game. It's a bird's-eye-view-race-around- a-track-affair. a bit like Supersprint except you don't see the whole track at once because it scrolls bit by bit instead. Certainly not very original and certainly not very good either.

As the race starts off zooms everybody else, leaving you, in last position, attempting to come first to qualify for the next stage. The controls are the usual Accelerate/Brake and rotate Left/Right, but the Accelerate is far too responsive, and the others not enough so. (Annoying point number 1.) There's also a limited nitro turbo button which seems to do more bad than good, as it sends you zooming right off the track, over the grass and onto another part of the track every time you use it. (And there you have annoying point numero 2.) There are no arrows on the road either to tell you which way round you should be going if this happens (number 3). Oh, and 4 is that the other karts are rather fond of driving into you all the time, blowing you up and hence delaying you heavily in the process.

Items can be picked up on the way round to repair your kart, give extra fuel and time and stuff which are very useful 'cos without them you probably won't get to finish the race. Of course, whether you'll want to is another story. Personally I found the game utterly boring after one or 2 goes and had no desire to play ever again, and wishing I hadn't wasted 2 minutes playing it already. And I really can't find anything more positive to say about it than that.