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Just about everyone must, at some time or other, have played Scalextric. I remember piecing together the track for hours and setting the scene before sending my Lotus hurtling round the track and through a pile of soldiers I'd put in the way.

This licensed version allows you to do everything you did with the real thing bar running down the soldiers and terrifying the dog. But what it comes down to in the end is a racing game.

You have the option to build your own track piece by piece like the toy (except none of the bits are warped or missing) or you can go straight for a readymade Grand Prix circuit. Select the number of laps and the quality of your opposition and you're away. Just one point about making your own track - don't get too carried away when you make it, otherwise you'll never get the thing to meet at the start again. It's certainly a nice idea to make your own convoluted race course.

With all this completed, the game becomes a simple head-to-head challenge with the computer or a friend. The screen is split like Pitstop II to give two opposing views. So we come to the crunch. Is it as good? The answer is no. The controls are imprecise, and the feeling you get racing around is not as good as either Pitstop and Pole Position. Playing the computer I found that it was capable of screaming around the circuit, pouring the speed on at the bends, whilst my car's tyres protested and the vehicle drifted all over the shop into the kerb. I also discovered that, if I let him by and overtake, lap me and pulled over at the last second, he'd crash every time.

The fun of these kind of games is in the overtaking so you're better off playing a friend, but as far as the quality of the simulation and the gameplay goes I'd stick with a copy of one of the above games and the kit itself.