Amiga Power


Combo Racer

Author: Gary Penn
Publisher: GBH
Machine: Amiga 500

 
Published in Amiga Power #12

Combo Racer

For those who don't know what a 'Combo Racer' is, it's a 'Combination Racer' - the combination of man and machine and, erm, another man in 'perfect harmony'. One driving the fragile motorbike-and-sidecar 'combination' at scarily high speeds, the other helping balance it around tight corner after tight corner.

Most of us will never be able to try it for real, but wouldn't it be brilliant, right, if you could sit at home and pretend you were doing it on your Amiga. Imagine, right, you could have a two-player thing, right, where one of you drives the bike and the other one does all the leaning. And you could have it almost realistic, right, so that when you crash or scrape the tunnel walls you get damaged. And that damage could affect the engine and so it'd be harder to win.

Yeah, right, and you could have some options, like changing the number of laps and a practice bit. And you could have proper racing seasons as well - with a disk save and a points table. Ah, and better still, right, could have a track editor, right, so you could do your own tracks. Wow. It'd be a bit like putting together a Scalextric set only it'd be easier to put away. Ah, it'd be brilliant.

And I'm sure it would - if it felt as though you were racing around a track in the first place, and not sitting in front of your computer screen watching some rather crude graphics go through their sorry paces. Combo Racer simply isn't thrilling or convincing enough. Buy a die-cast model of a suitable bike and use your nose to push it around your living room floor instead.

The Bottom Line

An adequate simulation of the sport - in all ways except the playability stakes. Unfortunately Combo Racer's on a road to nowhere.

Gary Penn

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