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The Texas entry in this year's Grand Prix for road race games is Car Wars. It's a dodgems-type game and follows the course of the Pac-Man on Wheels original.

The screen shows a racing circuit with five lanes, and four places where you can change lanes by a flick of the joystick. The track is strewn with dots and the idea is to race your car through the screen collecting these Pac-Man style. Your opponent in the race is a computer-controlled car which travels in the opposite direction.

Selecting the latter takes you into demo mode where you can sit and watch cars racing around the track and changing lanes. To get out of demo you press any key and you then set the difficulty. There are two categories to set and each has three levels.

The speed of the cars can be creeping, fast or flying but both must be the same. As an added danger the computer's car speeds up during the game by a factor of about three. You can allow this to happen early, late of "look out"!

Also on-screen is a high score indictaor and a set of lights which tell you when to start racing by flashing from red to green. A nice touch.

If you crash into the computer's car or it crashes into you, which is far more likely, you lose one of your three lives. In terms of graphics, a crash is the best part of the game.

Grey smoke clouds billow from the cars and coloured pieces of wreckage fly out in all directions rotating as they fall.

You can buy Car Wars from your Texas stockist on cartridge for £24.95. If you like dodgems then you'll find this quite playable although this is not helped by the awkward joysticks. Adequate use is made of the machine's sound and graphics, although this cartridge is nothing exceptional.