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Call me a masochist if you will, but this month I decided not to make Matt review all the cack games, and I elected myself to rate the abysmal Akira, and the slightly-less-offensive-but-still-awful Soccer Super Stars. It's not that I'm feeling extra generous towards the bearded Narcissus, just that I don't want him moaning when I get to review the second racing game in two months. Last ish it was ATR, and now Skidmarks 2 wings its way from sunny New Zealand, landing all dewy and fresh-like in The One's Easter basket.

It's the sequel to Skidmarks, rather embarrassingly copying the double-entendre filled name that blessed the original, before tacking a bold "2" on the end. Various other monickers attached themselves along the way - Super Skidz, for example - but the low-pH-ed powers-that-be finally settled with the simple 'Skidmarks 2'.

Let's pretend, then, that you never played the original game. Skidmarks was written early last year to show what Acid's new Blitz Basic programming language could do. It employed similar tactics to Sensible Soccer - tiny main characters, small pitch/track - to create a multi-player racing game which ignited the trousers of the press so much it received glowing awards throughout the magazines, and sold by the Smith's shelf-load.

It was only a matter of time, notably about 18 months, then, before we were to be treated with a sequel - but Acid recognised that the sequel to such a stunningly playable game would have to be something pretty special. And so we arrive at Skidmarks 2, a game which throws eight simultaneous players into the melting pot, along with modem/serial link play, a large range of cars including rendered cows on wheels, and even cars towing caravans!

But gimmicky new features are often used in sequels to mask the fact that the game underneath is essentially the same, and the later release is actually nothing more than a data disk. The question is: has Acid done enough with Skidmarks 2 to warrant the new release?

It's simple to compare Skidmarks 2 with ATR, simply because they're both racing games, they've both appeared at roughly the same time, and they're both attempting to improve on earlier games. While ATR was light years ahead of the earlier Overdrive, Skidmarks 2, on the face of it, isn't that much different from Skidmarks.

The graphics are similar, although it's much more 'more-er' now: more cars, more tracks, and more players; and because the gameplay's remarkably the same - apart from some neat additions tacked on to the main game, this could actually be Skidmarks.

Where it does score brownie points, though, is with the sheer madness of it all. Madness caused by wacky funster cars, cows and caravans; and by the excellent eight-player multi-Amiga link up. Like the original it's extremely playable, especially using an A1200, and the large number of tracks means longevity-wise, it's good too. But, if you gave me the original game to review today, I wouldn't look on it as favourably as I did two years ago - and so I feel uncomfortable with Skidmarks 2.

Because all the playability is geared towards multi-players, the single-player game gets a bit lost. I'm sick of trotting out this old cliché for every multi-player game, but it works for Skidmarks 2: if you play it on your own, it will quickly get boring.

Like its predecessor, Skids 2 relies heavily on the atmosphere generated by a crowd of players, rather than creating much itself. Also, it could perhaps have done with a few of the widdly-widdly guitar breaks and samples from Acid's own Roadkill, because to throw the same sound effects at Porsches, trucks and cows is just silly. A quick 'Moo-ooo' wouldn't have gone amiss. The bottom line, though, is that Skidmarks 2 is a fantastically playable racing game. Everybody with friends should own a copy.

No A1200-specific version, although the ordinary game detects the faster machine and upgrades itself. A CD32 version is likely.