Rumble Race: Top Gear Rally is the second rally game to appear on the Game Boy Color, although not by much if coming hot on the heels of V-Rally Championship Edition. Unfortunately, Top Gear Rally fairly pales in comparison to the Infogrames game for a number of reasons.

At first look, both titles are very similar. Both employ the same style of animation with a stationary car and a track that moves past, rising and dropping to indicate hills and jump. However while the tracks in V-Rally are quite varied and interesting, the ones in Top Gear Rally could best be described as 'long and boring'.

While V-Rally has gone for large, detailed cars, Top Gear Rally has instead chosen to go with small, 'super-deformed' ones. As a result what you actually get on-screen looks like nothing so much as a misshapen blob which might be a car but doesn't give you any sensation of actually driving one. And as for speed... Top Gear Rally is just too slow. The cars accelerate far slower than the ones in the Infogrames game and, although there are other, faster hidden cars to be unlocked there's just no incentive to search for them.

Even the sound in Top Gear Rally is inferior, the engine effect being a high-pitched repetitive noise which bears as much resemblance to a race-tuned rally engine as it does to demented car alarm.

Although Top Gear Rally is a far inferior rally game when compared with V-Rally, it does have the redeeming feature of a two-player link-up mode. If only the game itself was more exciting. As it is, you probably won't be able to find anyone who'll want to play it with you, bearing in mind that you both have to have bought a copy of the game.

What might have made Top Gear Rally better and maybe given it a bit of an edge was the fact that it's the first Game Boy Color rumble pak game, the 'rumble effect' having been actually built into the game cartridge. Sadly the rumble is irritating more than it is stimulating and does little more than make an awful lot of noise. You get better vibration from a pager.

If you're after a rally game for the Game Boy Color, give Rumble Race Top Gear Rally a miss, grab a copy of V-Rally Championship Edition instead. There's just no contest.