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The Lotus Turbo Esprit: probably, almost certainly, the car most people would like to have, perhaps. Very handy for bombing down the Autobahn at 120mph, but not quite so useful for crawling around the streets of Bradford on a wet Wednesday.

In Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 (the Esprit's been mislaid on the way to the sequel), there's plenty of the former and none of the latter. Eight stages await you, set in a forest, the night, fog, snow, a desert, a city, a marsh and a storm respectively. As usual, the object of each stage is to drive your Lotus Esprit or Elan through a number of checkpoints (how many depends on the stage) in a certain time, preferably also ahead of the other competitors.

Not surprisingly, the practice is a tad more complicated than the theory, given the boulders, sand, snow, other cars, lightning bolts and marshy bits that are strewn around the tracks. As in Cisco Heat, hitting an obstacle doesn't damage your Lotus, but slows you down. You can drive through trees and even skim over water without sinking - marvellously designed, these Lotuses (Loti?). In later stages, time and speed bonuses can be picked up by driving over them.

Control is by joystick or keyboard only, though you do get to choose whether you accelerate by hitting the Fire button or by pushing forward on the stick. Each Lotus has five gears, changed between with the usual "push forward/back and fire" routine.

Two, three or indeed four players are able to take part simultaneously. There are two two-player modes - one of them uses a horizontally split screen display and the other is achieved by linking two STs together with a null modem cable.

The graphics aren't awful, but put it this way - if they were your girl or boyfriend you wouldn't take them home to meet mother. Some of the atmospheric effects are pretty decent: fog really does look like fog (well, nearly); at night, the road signs loom up out of the darkness, and the snow looks vaguely cold and white. Apart from that, there are a few mountains or cityscapes in the background and a permanent view of the back-end of your Lotus waving about all over the shop. The 3D routines are quite solid, with objects appearing gradually rather than leaping out at you all of a sudden.

Unfortunately, Lotus 2 is let down in the one area a racing sim needs to excel in - sound effects. Instead of opting for samples, the programmers have included a weedy revving noise that's so intensely annoying you just have to turn the volume down. (Actually it sounds better at a lower volume.)

The phrase "seen it, done it" may spring to mind when you first see Lotus. There's nothing in it that hasn't been done before (except perhaps driving on water), and even what's there isn't too enthralling. Driving doesn't give you any sense of danger or speed, thanks mainly to the no-collision operation and inadequate sound effects. Instead of interacting intelligently, the other cars just get in the way and become a huge annoyance.

Good though some of the weather effects are, they don't prevent Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 from being just another racing sim. You need plenty of practice to complete the first stage (once you run out of time, that's it, you're kaput - no second chances) and from then on it only gets harder. Some of the later stages (accessed by passwords) have eight or even ten checkpoints.

A challenge it may be, but Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 is just too average by far to get to the finishing line first.

1. Vroom is still first on the grid for sound and realism.
2. Lotus 2 beats Cisco Heat on the prettiness front, but it's also much more difficult.
3. Gremlin's own Team Suzuki is faster.
4. Weather effects not normally seen. The best Super Monaco GP can manage is a grey sky.
5. More realism than Continental Circus, but this means it's not as enjoyable.