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I'm depressed. Very, very depressed. In fact, I'm almost suicidal. Why? Because I've just wasted two hours of my life playing Crazy Cars III! To add insult to injury, I've got the entire Amiga Force crew telling me how good the 16-bit version is. Perhaps they don't realise that on the C64 it's just a sparse, featureless racer that looks like it was programmed in 1985.

AF crew: On the Amiga, you can bet on the outcome of the race - can't you do that on the C64?
Me: Er, no.
AF crew: Have any strategy elements survived, like managing your money and choosing which race to enter?
Me: Ah, no.
AF crew: How about upgrading your car and repairing damage?
Me: Yes, but the optional extras automatically appear on your control panel - you don't get to choose what you want.
AF crew: Oh.

If you haven't already guessed, the long-suffering Commodore 64 owner's once again being offered a cut-down travesty of a game, with little more than the title in common with the 16-bit version.

Let's start at the beginning. You're a Lamborghini Diablo-owning boy racer hell-bent on beating the opposition in an all-action road race across America... I'm trying to make it sound exciting, but it's not easy. Crazy Cars III's one of the most uninteresting games I've seen.

It's not without its good points - the car handles well, the into-the-screen scrolling's excellent and you get a real feeling of speed, especially when you use one of your (limited) Chase HQ-esque Turbo Boosters. So, having got the guts of the game in order, where did it go so badly wrong? Well, for starters look at the roads - boring, featureless tracks rolling through boring, featureless landscapes. Each of the game's ten levels is a virtual carbon copy of the last!

Then there's the course layout. The tracks are of uniform width throughout the game, and contain nothing more challenging than a few gentle curves. No narrowing or widening roads, no on-road hazards like abandoned vehicles, there's a few speed traps but the cops can't catch up with you anyway, so what's the point?

There isn't even a finishing line for each stage - when the distance meter reaches zero your car just stops in the middle of nowhere! And don't forget the racing. There's a load of god-awful Sunday drivers to contend with, and because everything changes colour on each of the game's ten levels, it's difficult to tell which are day-trippers and which are competitors.

Worse still, the 16-bit position indicator's gone so you never know if you're winning or not. For squeak's sake, it was only a box and a number... would it really have been impossible to fit it into the C64 version? And why do you have to let go of the joystick and hit the space bar to activate a boost when the fire button does nothing?! Beats the hell out of me!

Oh, to hell with it, I've had enough. Crazy Cars III's a travesty of a game, a chewed-up and spat-out parody of the 16-bit version, Me, I'm off for a quick blast on Microprose Soccer, which urinated all over it's Amiga counterpart. As did Navy Seals, Total Recall, Robocop, The Shoot-'em-Up Construction Kit, Power Drift, Steg, Renegade...

Into-the-screen 3D driving games are two-a-penny these days, but rarely do they really work. Even less frequently are they as outstandingly bad as Crazy Cars III. There are no markings on the road or landscape so all sense of speed is generated by shabbily drawn roadside objects, i.e. not very much.

The car slides around the road like it's on an ice-rink, and even when you career into a tree at full pelt you'll scarcely suffer any damage. In fact, the only challenge the game offers is how long you can sit down and play it before starting to cry! (sniffle)

Presentation 31%
Unimpressive - far too sparse and samey

Graphics 34%
Boring visuals that animate like a brick

Sound 62%
Okay tune. Unfortunately, no sound effects

Hookability 33%
Nothing here to grab your attention...

Lastability 28%
...or make you want to play again?

Overall 34%