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BMX Simulator 2 is an adolescents dream. Just imagine four sweaty bodies, of your sexual preference, crammed around the keyboard of your Amstrad all thrilling at the spills and speeds of BMX racing.

Sounds great, doesn't it? The problem is that there are, unfortunately, relatively few female games players and if you are lucky enough to find some then the cries issuing from every ones vocal apparatus will not be those of jubilation but of downright frustration. Before all you ladies out there take offence with my prose you must admit that you are very much in the minority, but if it keeps you happy feel free to write a vitriol-laced letter to the Editor Duncan Evans. As I was saying before I felt the need to justify, not that well, my sexist viewpoint BMX Simulator 2 is one of those games designed to bring on early baldness, i.e. tearing you hair out when despite your best effort the computer-controlled bikers finish their four laps before you have time to complete your first.

This sad state of affairs arises not from any fault of your own but the unerring skill of the computer-controlled players and the almost physical impossibility of finding a patch of ground upon which your biker will remain upright.

There are, as you have probably already surmised, far too many obstacles waiting for the less than perfect player. The only way of avoiding these fiendishly placed hazards is to make full use of the burms, banked corners to you and me. These take considerable skill to negotiate and when the inevitable happens, and you find your rider trapped between two obstacles, even attempting to face your rider in the correct position results in yet another tumble.

I must admit that this program is not without its good points as the graphics do at least resemble the terrain they are supposed to represent and the all-too-frequently-seen tumble does have some nice animation that you can watch whilst banging your head against the wall.

Four players are allowed in any combination of human- and computer-controlled bikers with three friendly types on the keyboard and one antisocial using a joystick. Despite my earlier scathing remarks there are one or two features of this game which impressed even a hard bitten cynic like me. One was the aforementioned graphics and the other was the landscape itself. Unlike more conventional one screen racing games of this type the terrain upon which your race comes complete with hills and slopes. This has two obvious effects upon the gameplay, when you go up a hill you slow down and when you go down a hill you speed up. The really impressive feature about these hills comes into effect when you crash at the bottom of one. Just as in real life your biker wobbles all over the place as he, or she, tries to make a hill start. This leads to even greater frustration as you nearly always wobble off the side of the slope and crash.

If you play in difficult mode you are allowed to select your tyre and chain wheel size. Altering these allow you to alter the acceleration, top speed and turning characteristics of your bike.

One for all you masochists out there.