The One


Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's Super Off-Road Racer

Categories: Review: Software
Publisher: Virgin Games
Machine: Amiga 500

 
Published in The One #24

Brian Nesbitt steels himself for the race of a lifetime against the legendary Ironman.

Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's Super Off-Road Racer (Virgin Games)

Based on the popular American indoor arena event and converted from the little-known Leland coin-op (the company's only other claim to 'fame' is the American Football 'simulation' Quarterback, converted by Melbourne House), Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's (TM) Super Off-Road Racer (TM) is truck-racing pure and simple.

Sat in your 'tuff' truck alongside three opponents (two of which may be human-controlled), your objective is to win at all costs - to beat the Ironman himself and collect as much money as possible in the process.

To test your mettle to the full there are eight different tracks, played both clockwise and anti-clockwise - and just to keep you guessing, the later tracks appear after repetitions of the earlier ones. Each track is contoured with bumps and jumps, dips, the occasional water trough, 'chicane', 'crossroad', and even a short-cut.

Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's Super Off Road

Hard work, but only those with nerves of steel can melt the Ironman.

Amiga

They certainly don't make 'em like they used to, eh? Ironman's a new name to the world of computer racing, but its gameplay's almost as old as the man himself. This is no Bad Thing. In fact, it's a Very Good Thing, because apart from Activision's rather reasonable conversion of Atari Games' Super Sprint, there's bugger all in this field that's of any merit. Ironman's undoubtedly the best yet though as it feels so good. It's straightforward, no-nonsense fun all the way, even without other human players to hand, and as such comes highly recommended.

ST

There's no discernible difference between this one and what's seen here. You can expect to see the ST version at the same time as the others.

PC

The biggest surprise about this incarnation has 1o be the CGA version - it's quite excellent, despite its limited colour palette of cyan, magenta, black, and white. PC Ironman also supports EGA (with 64 colours, although most monitors won't pick it up), VGA, which has the same number of colours but with a higher resolution (making it identical to the 16-bit versions seen here) and AdLib sound boards. And there's a novel 'Boss Key' with the press of a button you are returned to DOS, allowing you to run programs - provided you have enough memory spare.

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