Previous Next

Here's a game for all you budding world champions out there, just itching to climb into the seat of a fast, powerful car and drive to victory! In this motor racing simulation from Superior Software, you are in control of a potential race-winning car weaving through a seemingly endless field of cars through five different stages - rolling fields, night, snow, desert and riverside scenes.

Sounds easy? Well, believe me it isn't. To qualify for each stage you must finish within the top twelve, which is signified by the bonus going into the blue region of the indicator at the top of the screen.

This is no easy task. To qualify, you will have to compromise between speed and avoiding crashes which will reset your speed to zero, leaving you to start once more the steady acceleration up to a stomach-churning 225 miles an hour to reach the elusive goal.

To add to this the stages get progressively harder with the realistic effect of skidding on the snow and riverside scenes. The 3D graphic effects are superbly executed with sharply drawn mountains and pyramids staying elusively in the distance as your car eats up the miles.

The animation of the cars' movement is smooth and the good use of colours greatly enhances the effect, making your red car easy to pick out amongst your blue opponents.

The screen display is also very neatly set out with various indicators showing your speed, score and bonus. However, despite this I do have a few minor criticisms to make. The fact that I was given no option to turn the sound off proved to quite an annoyance, as when you accelerate and decelerate there are sounds moving accordingly in a chromatic scale. If you leave your speed constant the sound too remains constant, leaving an often piercing noise ringing constantly in your ears while you drive.

This is my main criticism although I would have also liked to have seen a few bends to negotiate and would have preferred a name input in the five-place high score table.

Nevertheless these criticisms do not detract from the enjoyment of the game. Although obviously it does not provide the realism of a steering wheel, the game controls are very simple. There are four keys - Z for left, X for right, * and ? for acceleration and deceleration.

This ease of use and the smooth, well-executed graphics, together with it being, to my knowledge, the only motor-racing simulation on the Electron market, make Overdrive well worth a look.

Ian Critchley