Previous Next

The first thing that strikes you about Powerdrome is how incredibly difficult it is. Your Quad-boosted, turbo-rapide Typhoon (that's a sort of racing ship you'll be trying to pilot) responds to the slightest nudge of your mouse or joystick. At first this means that you spend most of your time sliding about on the floor, or crashing into walls.

The ship you're piloting is controlled by a jet fighter-like pitch and roll system and it really does take a lot of getting used to. The best thing to do initially is to concentrate on steering, at a sedate pace, in the centre of the track. Forget about trying to race until you know what you're doing. You'll only see your competitors once as they tear off into the distance. Personally I find the trauma of going through the process of mastering controls like this infuriating. But persevere: it's going to be worth it in the end.

The idea is to circumnavigate laps of the track grand prix style, avoiding obstacles, outpacing your opponents and keeping your machine in the air by refuelling and repairing at pitstops. The course is depicted as a series of blocky vector graphics which scroll smoothly towards you - but you don't get a lot of time to admire the scenery. Even on the easiest of the courses you're given there are no comfortable straights for you to cruise down at speed. Bends are tight, and negotiating them takes skill and carefully timed acceleration and deceleration.

There's a good feeling of movement in the game and the ship does respond once you've got the hang of flying it. Unfortunately, you're still likely to find yourself bashing chunks out of your machine, so be thankful you have the Robopit. A fully automatic repair, modification and refuelling station, you glide and select the spare parts you need. These are fitted robotically and (apparently) free of charge. What it costs, of course, is valuable time. The screens here are nice enough to make pitstops more than just a chore and the ticking clock keeps it part of the overall game.

In Powerdrome you can choose to take out the control panel from the bottom of the screen to give a full screen to race on. This works well, but you lose your very useful damage monitors and fuel gauge, though the rear view mirror is no great loss - it's too small, even if you did have time to look at it.

All of this amounts to a better-than-average racing game. What makes Powerdrome more exceptional is the depth of gameplay. Beating other ships on easy courses is hard enough; but when you get on to the more complex ones, playing Powerdrome is raised to a fine art. There are courses which are impossibly tight and covered with really awkward dipping and climbing tunnels. When you get to this stage the fiddly work at the beginning is rewarded in full.

Race games like this rely on the quality of the course you race over and Powerdrome comes through strongly on that count. This is not the fastest, most colourful or best looking game of its type, but I bet you'll play it more than most, especially on the datalink mode if you've got a mate, with an Amiga.