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As far as conversions go, Electric Dreams' Super Sprint isn't that bad. It follows the staggeringly popular Atari coin-op very closely, without missing any of the essential features except one - playability.

Like the Atari original, and unlike most other racing games, Super Sprint doesn't put you in the driver's seat, hunched over the wheel as the bend and ramps come hurtling towards you. Instead it opts for an overhead view, with each circuit laid out like a miniature Scalextric track, complete with miniature Scalextric cars.

There are eight circuits in all, loaded in two files, and the second set of four can only be loaded after the first four have been successfully completed.

The circuits range from the merely difficult, with hair-pin bends, to the completely evil. Some of the tracks have gates which open and close, some have jump-ramps which must be taken at speed, and some have blind sections where the track doubles under itself, and the cars are hidden from view. And just in case you start getting cocky, there are the occasional oil slicks, puddles and whirlwinds to send your car into a spin.

Driving into bonus panels increases your score, and collecting three of the golden spanners which haphazardly appear earns you a custom car bonus at the end of the race, where you can improve the traction, speed, acceleration and scoring performance of your car.

But despite all this authentic presentation, somewhere along the road some of the coin-op's playability seems to have gone astray. Joystick control is a real bitch, and it'll be ages before you'll be able to get your motor cruising round the track without skidding into crash barriers, rebounding all over the shop, and roaring off in the wrong direction.

It's a major achievement just to complete a lap, never mind actually being first past the chequered flag, and to make matters worse, the computer-controlled 'drone' cars are entirely infallible.

The two-player mode is much more successful, and this is where the game comes into its own. Your own shortcomings as a Grand Prix racer don't seem so embarrassing when your friend is also a total dip-stick. The whole thing can be quite entertaining, provided that you don't opt for the three-car Super Sprint mode, where both humans are pitted against a drone car which, as usual, makes no mistakes.

Super Sprint has lots of nice touches (like the 'chopper which delivers a new car whenever yours blows up), but it also has lots of eccentricities which are mildly annoying. The hi-score table doesn't register anything less than units of 100, so if you've got 1,350 points, 50 get lopped off immediately. On the other hand, bonus points are sometimes awarded arbitrarily, and I once got 7,200 for colliding with a wall. And as well as the official short-cuts on the circuits, there are some unofficial ones, so that you can get ahead of the competitors by speeding up a jump-ramp at an angle and completely missing out one loop of track.

But in the end, whether you like it or not will depend on how quickly you can master control of your car. A lot of patience and a responsive joystick will help enormously and, not least, a friend to play it with.