£2.99
Codemasters

Vroom, vroom, rev up that engine and burn off down the road!. Sounds exciting eh?, well personally couldn't fall asleep fast enough.

The race starts in the time honoured manner, with the player's car sitting at the starting line (puzzling how your car is coloured and the rest are in mono, perhaps they ran out of paint).

The aim is to reach the end of the run within the confines of the dreaded timer. There are five runs in all, and frankly, the only reason they present any challenge at all is the sluggish control of the car.

Other road users bump and jostle you mercilessly, but a lot of the time you don't notice them because the scrolling is so jerky that they are upon you before you can react. Twin Turbo V8 adds nothing to the racing game genre, so save your money.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Skint? Or just tight? Then follow Marcus Berkmann down to his lair and sample his goodies (oo-er). None over three quid (or to you madam, £2.99).

Code Masters
£2.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

You don't want to know what I think of this game, do you? Of course not. You want to know what David Darling thinks.

"The most realistic road game I've ever seen on a Spectrum! Amazingly playable, just like performance car driving!"

Is it? Then where's the steering wheel? Where's the smell of petrol? And where are the sponsor's drinks parties afterwards?

In fact this isn't a bad little game, for all the Darling bilge. Fortunately neither of the brothers has actually had anything to do with it, which may be why it's playable, challenging and overall good fun. In fact it's the first road racer I've played for ages that I've enjoyed. It may look like all of the others, but for once the balance of graphics, playability and speed is well matched. There's no pretty background, which means that for once you can't predict what's going to happen next. Indeed, as you go up and down some fairly steep hills, you're all too liable to be caught out and crash into a lamp-post, a cactus or some equally fiendish hazard. Collision detection is good, and the fact that only your car is in colour makes the whole vista easy on the eye.

Yes, I liked it. But "just like performance car driving"? Leave it out, Dave.

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.

TWIN TURBO V8
CodeMasters

One of the few looking-at-it-from-behind bargs (apart from the re-releases) and a complete waste of time. The road weaves about quite well, but the graphics are awful and there's nothing to do apart from moving left and right and laughing a lot. It's crap.

Label: Code Masters
Author: Ian Dunlop
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Erm, well, it's a nice idea isn't it? There's a lot of colour, isn't there? There's plenty... no, sorry I can't keep this up. How am I supposed to review a game positively when it plays as badly as this one? Not only that, but Turbo V8 is in the same vein as Out Run but not nearly as good.

You are driving a Twin Turbo V8, the latest in a long line of supercars. You have to drive a mad 500 mile dash across varying types of US landscape including desert (yellow), winterland (blue) day and night.

Along the way, you get to career through tunnels and industrial piping that hangs between pylons. The road snakes along and loads of cars all travel along in the same direction with the aim of driving just a little bit slower than you so as to cause maximum obstruction.

This is all routine. There are five stages, you have to complete each stage within a chosen time limit, your car has two gears and the road is very hilly. So what new features does the game have to offer? Level three has a low cloud layer.

As you can see, TTV8 isn't too much of an advancement. That's OK, that's cool. A SEU doesn't have to lead the way forward to be fun. Does it make you come back for more? Do you sweat on the hairpin bends? Do you struggle to see down the hills that quickly disappear from view? Do you duck as you drive under low bridges? Well, not really I'm afraid.

The main problem is the speed of the game. Considering how little there is to update on open road, the game moves appallingly slowly. Even dated products like Deathchase 2000, with more on screen than this even at the heaviest of times, move way faster. Going under bridges slows the game further, to a completely unplayable pace. It's a shame, because with a little more speed, the game could be great, much better all side objects and even the road itself are made up of vectors, and not the most complicated ones at that.

The sound is far from brilliant, but the idea behind it works far better than the final product. A click-track gets faster or slower depending on the car's speed, and as opposing than WEC Le Mans. The only sprites used are the other cars, cars race past a droning noise gets louder and softer, depending on the distance between you and them.

It seems that, for now, WEC Le Mans still holds the standard by which all are to be judged. Come on industry, aren't you going to put up some sort of fight?