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Dag and indeed nabbit. Moonshine Racers has been a while arriving (maybe it was the traffic) but it's finally here. Does it live up to the hype? It takes place in the deep American South and stars two good ol' boys by the name of Ike and Billy Joe. Being the 'devil may care but they certainly don't' funsters they are, their sole objective in life is to deliver their moonshine to Old Man Tucker, who pays them handsomely for their trouble. Unfortunately the police are after them too.

On each level you must deliver the moonshine to Tucker before your time runs out. No Formula One racers here - all you have is your beat-up old wagon - and it tends to blow up. Later on, your truck is upgraded to something a little more useful - a saloon - and ultimately, a hot rod. The gears are immensely complex - a low gear for slower driving and a high gear for, er, faster driving.

You don't just have the bends and curves of the track to contend with either. Strewn along the way are tumbleweed, tyres, barrels, other vehicles and even trees, all of which take their toll on your labouring engine. Worst of all are the police barricades - crashing into one of them alerts the sheriff and he gets on your trail quicker than the man from the Inland Revenue on the fifth of April.

Complete a level successfully and you visit Marlon's shop for spares. At first you only have enough money to buy the simplest of things, such as tyres, but as you earn more cash from your deliveries you can purchase really useful stuff - a turbo for instance. This runs on nothing but neat moonshine and can put a mile between you and the sheriff in seconds.

Nothing much to worry about here. The graphics are sufficiently detailed to onvery the atmosphere and the road scrolls along nicely. Even so, the road itself seems more blocky in style than the other sprites - it could almost have come from a different game.

The backgrounds are well drawn and change with each level - not that you have time to look at them in any detail. There are plenty of roadside/onroad sprites too. Unfortunately this sometimes means there are too many on the screen at any one time and the track starts to look cluttered. Even so, the hills are convincing and so is the way your truck bounces over them.

Sound isn't as good as the graphics - just the usual burbles from the sound chip. It's not sampled, which is a shame because a digitised "yee-haw!" would have been just perfect.

Moonshine Racers adds a novel angle to a tired genre. You actually have to aim for something rather than just beat the clock or anther racing opponent. This means you're bound to care more about the outome of the game and thus try harder to beat it. You don't start back on the first level when you die either - you have three lives. You can even improve your truck with add-ons. All this makes Racers far more interesting than other racing sims. It's not an exceptional game but you're more likely to want to beat it than give up in despair - and that has to be a good sign.