Yes, it's another environmentally unsound release from the company with the big boxes, Psygnosis. For a two disk game they have enough packaging to house the entire populous of Argentina. But less of my whining and on to the game.

It's a long time since we've seen a motor game on the market. All the programmers ran away from them with their rears on fire after the release of Team Suzuki, the game so hard they released a training program showing you how to drive the sodding thing.

The only others before that all looked and played the same, but now comes Red Zone. Read on, children, read on. I like motorbikes. I've even got one myself so this game was going to be a bit of a treat for me.

When you first boot up the game the demo is fantastic. It's some guy on a motorbike driving from the background and skidding to a halt in the foreground. Crap and boring, yes, but very well done.

Once you've battled your way through the demo it's game time and all you kiddies have to shake yourselves from your alcohol-induced haze and think. The program opens up into a icon menu where you can control all the setting for the game - it's quite extensive, really.

Because racing games and simulators in general rely on good screen updates, there can't be much going on on the screen. Asa result the programmers usually build in options that allow you to cut down on detail and the overall amount of graphics.

Red Zone allows you to do this and more - there are all sorts you can slip in and take out, such as the backdrops, clouds and the like.

But for those of you out there who are capitalist pigs, who enjoy sucking the lifeblood from the heart of the socialist working class (he's talking about accelerated Amiga owners - Ed) there are options for adding more detail to the game, such as trackside buildings and so on.

With the details switched on, it looks pretty impressive. It's got all the usually rubbish you see at Donnington - the crowd stands, bridges, Iron Maiden...

I've been avoiding the gameplay for too long, so I'd better let you into a little secret (cursory glance from side to side) - it's crap. Yep, it's bloody awful. You have to do a qualifying round to get into the race - fine. So here I am, coffee and crisps in front of my trusty Amiga, on the grid with mu pulsating sex machine, and my motorbike, the lights go to green and we're off.

The feeling you get when trying to drive the machine can only be compared to drinking 15 pints of Special Brew then proceeding to unicycle on the inside of a spin dryer with a bent drum. Very tricky indeedy.

So I thought, that's fair enough I just can't play it very well yet, so off I went, hamming away, and things didn't get any better.

When you do really go for a burton and stuff you bike into one of the walls, sometimes you can't turn around again, or if you can t takes ages and you have to use the cursor keys on the keyboard to flip around.

I actually timed it once - it took over a minute to turn around and get going again. So I eventually persevered and got round the track in about five minutes and it says "You failed to qualify" - I'd never have bloody guessed. Cyril Smith on a tricycle could have done better than that.

Racing with the other bikes was a bit mickey mouse because the screen updates are so bad you only see them for about two frames before they steam off into the distance. Meanwhile you are trying to turn around after inserting your cranium into the crash barrier.

The rival bikes aren't particularly detailed which is a bit of a let down - they look sort of like the Tron bikes only not as well drawn. Earlier in this review I was going on about screen updates, and how the Amiga is usually crap at them. Well this game is no exception - one minute you are in the middle of the road, the next you are wrapped round a crash barrier with a 750cc bike up your botty.

The whole point of getting rid of excess detail is to speed up the gameplay, but the change is practically unnoticeable.
Sorry Psygnosis but it's a turkey.

Red Zone? Isn't that an area where you can't park your car? Well no, it's the latest motorbike simulator from Psygnosis. You have the chance to become champion motorcyclist of the world, but first you must win all of your races. To do this, you must make your way around 10 tracks from around the world (Silverstone etc.) against six of the most fiendish competitors you will ever find on a motor track.

Before you race you must choose a bike, and qualify. You have the choice of manual or automatic gears. Now most people would think 'Great I'll choose auto 'cos it's nice 'n' easy' and indeed it is.

But you don't quite have the control that a manual gearbox gives you, and this is vital. Next you can set up details about the course you want to ride on, such as scenery, number of laps and things like that, to tune the game so it runs as fast and as smoothly as possible.

Once you have chosen your options, you are provided with a sort of code. This enables you to define the system more quickly the next time you play it, by simply entering the code on the options screen.

Danger zone?
So what's so special about this game? Well instead of the standard view you get form most bike sims - looking at the action from behind bend in what you think to be a decent manoeuvre, but unfortunately you seem to be travelling horizontally towards the yellow barrier at the side of the road. You hit one side, and immediately fly to the other, and back and back until you come to a stop and have to reposition your bike.

This control system, accurate as it may be, is just too complicated for a game of this kind. OK, it's realistic, but it takes a lot of getting used to. If you can stand the way it works fine, but I like a game I can get into immediately, not messing around, just boot and play.
Close but no cigar, I'm afraid.

Picture the scene: It was a Monday morning> I arrived back in the office after two weeks' holiday. Mark said "Did you have a nice time?" I told him I did. "We've got a present for you," he said, and gave me a big black Psygnosis box with a picture of a motorbike on the front.

"We thought you'd like to review this," he said with an editorial twinkle in his eye. I was touched - they'd saved this motorbike game review for me because of my new-found interest in motorbikes.

"We saved this motorbike game review for you because no one except the PR bloke from Psygnosis can keep the bike on the track for long enough to complete a race..." And lo and be jiggered, neither could I. But persistence, as the saying goes, is... er... well, it's jolly important anyway.

So I stuck at it, and pretty soon I was actually able to get all the way round a course without destroying the bike. Within only half a day or so, I managed to qualify for a real race.

Red Zone is one of those polygon 3D affairs where you blast round a Grand Prix circuit as fast as you possibly can, if not faster. Because you're on a motorbike, your view occasionally tilts at bizarrely improbable angles as you bank the bike to 'take corners' (although in Red Zone, the phrase 'to take a corner' really ought to be redefined as 'to crash into a barrier in the most irritating way you can think of').

You can choose either a first or second person view and, when you first start playing, the second person view, where you can see your own bike, is the most useful. It gives you something of an idea of what happens as you ricochet around and lets you get to grips with controlling the bike a bit better.

It's pretty difficult to judge distances, though, so you tend to hit the barriers even more frequently than usual and it's not really that much use for actual racing. So when you've got the hang of it you move back to the first person view. For reasons that are never adequately explored you can also choose side and rear views (when a bike's this difficult to control, why would you ever want to not look where you're going?).

When you finally manage to finish a race, you can watch a replay of it as seen from a helicopter. This really brings home the absurdly difficult control as you watch your bike slew wildly around the track looking or the 'racing line' into the next crash barrier. And in case that wasn't enough evidence, you also get statistics on how many times you hit the barrier and how many other riders you endangered (I was so good that I managed to endanger up to 11, even when there were only five other riders in the race).

It's very difficult to control, but with a bit of practice it does become slightly easier. But is it wort the effort? Well, no, frankly. 'Smooth' is not a word that would be used to describe the animation nor would anyone be very likely to say 'extremely attractive' when asked to describe the backgrounds.

The backgrounds can be pepped up by adding all the extra detail offered on the options screen, and this does help to make the whole thing much nicer to look at. But at a price. The animation moves from 'not very smooth' to 'very jerky and slow indeed' and you soon eschew scenery in favour of a bit of oomph. Doubtless there are some really great pictures of when you win the championship (the one of you in bandages when you've written the bike off and been retired form the race is quite amusing) but I can't imagine very many people putting in the effort required to get that far.

Doubtless there are some really great pictures of you when you win the championship (the one of you in bandages when you've written the bike off and been retired form the race is quite amusing) but I can't imagine very many people putting in the effort required to get that far.

It certainly isn't rubbish, don't get me wrong. Unfortunately, though, it isn't very easy, it isn't huge amounts of fun to play and it doesn't look utterly brilliant. I didn't expect to be World Champion first time out, but I wouldn't mind not crashing at every corner and I wouldn't mind if the corners looked pretty when I hit them.