Brmm, brmmm, revv revv. Phwooaaargh, the birds are gonna luv me in this, I can tell ya. A brand new Lotus Elan, and some new roads for me to race the Esprit that I got last year on. Eh by eck, my pulling power's gone through the roof since I bought this big red throbbing machine> The wimmen I've 'ad chasing me you would not believe. You know that Fiona Fullerton piece off the telly? Well she's been after me, an' so's that lass of Coronation Street, Sally Webster.

Sorry lads, Trev 'ere. The reason why I'm so excited is that Gremlin have finally got around to chuckin' out the sequel to last year's stonker, Lotus Esprite Turbo Challenge. That racing game was the business as far as I'm concerned and Gremlin have at least done the sound deal by not chuckin' out the same game with a few more tracks, like with Hard Drivin' II or summat. What they've done is change the gameplay considerably to make it a separate package, like, and therefore worth the dosh. Or is it? 'Ere's the low down, lads.

This time around we get eight levels, starting off dead simple then endin' up pretty nasty, like. Instead of 'avin a race as such this one takes its cue from Rad Mobile, Sega's ace coin-op, and has a series of checkpoints that have to be reached before your time runs out.

You start off wi' summat like 30 seconds to reach the next checkpoint, or whatever, then when you reach the next one you are given the seconds to reach the next checkpoint, plus whatever seconds you 'ad left from the one you've just done, like. Clever innit? Each of the eight levels 'as upwards of five checkpoints with the final level 'avin' ten long ons. All this track adds up to over an hour of solid drivin', if you're 'ard enough to get all the way through like I am.

An' when me an' Shaz are in the front seat with the furry dice an' the sunstrip with our names on there just ain't no stoppin' us mate. I can tell ya.
The eight levels take the driver through a variety of landscapes, each of them presenting their own little problems, like. For example the marshland (level seven) has some tracks between certain checkpoints surrounded by deep water. You go off the track pal, then you're in deep, mate. Ha ha ha! Geddit? Or the snowbound level gives a near pure white background (where's the track, man?) and some mean patches of ice that throw you off course in a wicked skid.

The fifth level with the fog is the really smart one - the way they've got the effect of the grey blanket just out of love a poet, believe me! The same effect is used in a different way on the right time of level six, black in the distance but one of the neat touches is that if you go through a tunnel everythin' becomes fully illuminated, like, by the tunnel lights.

It's well ace - both these levels really get across the uncertainty of drivin' like a maniac in poor visibility, an' I should know. You're slightly on edge all the time because you know that the road could disappear around a corner, leavin' you behind at any minute.

The two-player options is where the game starts to come into its own. The split screen - only in two-player mode this time around, fact fans! - means that you get some really sound action as you try and chase down your human opponent, and if you're really clever you can keep 'arf an eye on 'is screen an' try and move around so that you get in 'is way when he tries to get past, like. Really smart.

What is even more smart is that you can now link up two Amigas to get four player action! Wow! With two players on each machine using the old null modem link (what?) you can get some well ace races goin' between the four of ya. Well smart. Even three players is pretty damn groovy. In short I reckon it's well sorted.

Cheers! Trev.
Thanks Trev. Jools is back for the techie bits.
It is different enough to warrant a purchase from those who have completed the original. In other words it is a standalone game in its own right, not half a sequel like some I could name. The graphics are up to the same smoothly animated standards that knocked your socks off in the first one. Each track-side object uses 17 sprites as it moves nearer then past your point of view to get that really smooth impression of speed.

The handling is superbly observed, just like the real thing. Lifting your finger briefly off the power on a hairy corner will pull you in enough to get around and this can be used to your advantage to get past some tricky opponents on the inside line. Sound is excellent - the high standard in-race effects are complemented by high class tunes, a separate one for each level, but the CD player of the first one, which I loved, is missing (bawl).

One big improvement is the way that the on-player game gives a full screen display, as opposed to the cropped one of the original version.
I have to say I preferred the original because there was more to it - the pitstops and the levels of difficulty - and I personally preferred the challenge of racing 18 or 19 opponents rather than the clock. But racing against the clock means continua pressure, and therefore continual entertainment, and it is only my preference.

There are very strong merits for the checkpoint approach, one being that you never get to first place and never stand the chance of getting bored. Taking a whole different approach was brave but it means that this is a worthy purchase whether you have the original or not. So, a highly addictive standalone product, and not a rehash cash-in sequel. Well worth the money.

You know how it is: you pile away from the starting line, foot hard down on the accelerator, popping through the gears to break away from the pack as quickly as possible. You slip past the other cars on the straight and hammer into the bend. Unfortunately, there's that green marker car you never saw before! Heaving the wheel to the side, you narrowly miss the opponent and scream out of control. Wrestling with the controls you bravely try to bring the car back on line, then... you wake up. Gremlin allows you to live out this dream to a certain extend with Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge and now you can take it further with Lotus Challenge 2.

Courses of action
The game puts you in control of a Lotus Elan in a Pole Position-style, view-from-behind, race against the clock. The aim is to reach a series of checkpoints before the time runs out, the clock being reset every time you pass through a gate. You can either race solo, with the display taking up the whole screen, or in a head-to-head competition on a horizontally-split screen. If you happen to have a spare Amiga and a null modem lead, you can connect them together so that up to four people can race at the same time.
The competition takes place over eight different, gruelling stages, each one set in its own separate environment.

Forest Course
This is a basic 'hammer along the road as quickly as possible stage'. All you have to do is swerve around the other cars and watch out for the water on the track.

Night Course
Its headlights on to illuminate you through this one, as you whiz around a series of tight turns and tunnels through a darkened city. Watch your distance though, things are a lot closer than they seem!

Fog Course
Take it easy on this course. The thick mist makes it difficult to judge the bends and you never know what could be lurking around the next corner.

Snow Course
The roads are very slippery in this wintery, rather Christmas-looking section, so concentrate carefully and try to compensate as you hit and slide round the bends.

Desert Course
A dusty road littered with sand dunes and cacti hardly makes the best of racing conditions, so watch the signs and try to stick to the road.

Motorway Course
Whatever you do, don't stray into the right-hand carriageway! You could find yourself in a head-on collision! Those low-bed trucks at the intersections will take some dodging too.

Marsh Course
Drifting off the sides of the road could cause problems here, since you tend to sink in the water! On the later sections, collect the time-domes to gain vital seconds.

Rain Course
Windscreen-wipers slapping, you have to take care not to come a cropper. The roads are slick so watch you don't skid!

We don't need no re-run
A lot of people would probably argue that Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 is a bit too similar to the original to be rated very highly. It's true that the style of the game is very similar, but the sequel has quite a few refinements which allow it to stand up in its own right.

As well as having a completely new series of courses, the graphics have undergone quite a few changes. For example, the original Lotus could only be played on a split-screen display, whereas playing in single-player mode on the sequel displays a full screen, complete with some pretty impressive horizon and sky effects. The addition of such items as a password system to access the higher levels and the fact that you can data-link two machines for a four-way competition also makes the game one of the most feature-packed car racing games available.

The action is pretty rapid, especially when you are hammering around a series of downhill bends, and the feeling of tension as the clock counts to zero as you approach the next checkpoint is so immense. The only real criticism of the game is that it's pretty much a straight racing game. Sure there are lots of bells and whistles, but when you get down to the bare bones of the gameplay, it's just a foot to the floor Pole Position variant, albeit a very enjoyable one.

Lotus Turbo Challenge II gives you the chance to drive a beautiful Lotus Elan or Esprit at insane speeds, though exotic locations without the slightest possibility of either crashing or being stopped by the law. As such you can't help but recommend it in the fun stakes - the AMIGA POWER team are well known for their liberal interpretations of the speed limit at times, but this is real wish fulfilment stuff.
If we really drove like we drive Lotus II we'd all have been locked up long ago.

Of course, you could say similar things about hundreds of other driving games, couldn't you? Well no, not really - they may or may not be fun (depending on the game), but almost universally they bear precious little relation to the actual act of driving itself. If they've (deservedly, by the way) come in for some stick for being a little bit samey lately, they equally deserve to be slagged for how unrealistic they all are.

Lotus II, on the other hand, while sharing plenty of surface similarities with its peers - the action is presented from your standard behind-view, pseudo-3D perspective, for instance - succeeds in being both great fun in an arcade-style way as well as remarkably true to real driving. In look, feel and ambition it quite confidently leaves its rivals munching on exhaust fumes.

Make no mistake then - this is one much-hyped game that actually turns out to deserve its pre-release reputation. Cynical readers (and of course, cynical journos like ourselves) - even those who enjoyed the first Lotus game - will have taken all the pre-release hype with a lorry load of road-salt, but it seems we needn't have bothered at all. Gremlin have mixed speed with convincing graphics, imagination, a good feel and simple car to produce. I'd say, the best sprite-based driving game ever on the Amiga.

It's a pleasant surprise that this isn't a game in which you're forced to race against dim-witted computer opponents. You can either slog it out with the elements - much like in real fast driving, where you're not actually racing anyone, just trying to get somewhere fast - or take on one, two or even three(!) pals in the split screen or computer link version (more of that later). There's no racetrack as such - this is all out on the open road, and the only way to progress is to get to the checkpoint in time (OutRun-style, in fact).

In the first levels this is easy-peasy, but later on, with furious weather conditions to cope with, it gets altogether more challenging. Of course there are other cars on the road, but they seem to be about as intelligent as the oil slicks and felled trees that litter the roads. Really they exist merely to get in your way than try and beat you.

One trouble with the first Lotus was that, despite being a graphically excellent drive, it was badly flawed in the crash recovery department. If you got tangled up with an obstacle, the car would slow to a halt (it wouldn't actually flip upside down though, OutRun-style) making getting back into the race a real pain because the blasted car took so long to get itself started again.

Lotus II has fixed that, but in doing so has created some problems of its own. Now you don't stop at all - Lotus (the company) have apparently insisted that none of its expensive kit gets damaged even in computer simulation (the softies) - so instead of bringing you to an abrupt halt, hitting something just makes the control go wibbly and slows you down a bit.

This makes the game faster and saves the getting-started-again problem, but equally it makes it difficult to judge just how appalling your mistake was without you keeping a keen eye on the Speedo It's a moot point, but in the end I think I'd say this non-stopping is a good thing - though, of course, it's pretty hard to take a game totally seriously when slamming into a lorry at 140 just slows you down to 20 mph (instead of simply mashing you).

Still, that's all part of what makes it such an unusual game - it's so arcade-like in speed and smoothness terms, while much of the actual driving experience it's trying to emulate (the way the two different cars handle, say) is so realistic. Unusual, but it works.

The other really unusual thing about the game is the style and range of the weather conditions presented - and how they really affect the way your car handles and you play the game. Throughout though, the cars handle a treat (just different enough from one another to be noticeable), the sweeping descents into valleys and blind hill tops (as in the first game) are as exciting as ever, and, of course, the programmers have made no mistakes with the parallax scrolling. As a one player game it's simply excellent.

That said though, the best, best thing about it is the ability to play against your pals. As we've often said before, computer games are always best when you're trying to whip your buddies, and I reckon this applies especially to driving games. The horizontally split screen option (carried over from the first Lotus game) puts you head-to-head against a pal using the same computer without any noticeable loss of speed - I would say that this is the best way to play the game, except a) Stuart beat me every time we played, so there MUST be something wrong and b) if you link two computers with a lead you can either play a friend with a full screen each, or split both screens for four (four!) simultaneous players. It's quite something.

So is it worth buying? Well, yes, of course - it may not be perfect, but it's probably the most atmospheric game of its kind, and most certainly the most fun. Definitely recommended.

Gremlin move into top gear this month with the eagerly-awaited sequel to their top-selling race game, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge. Produced by crack development team, Magnetic Fields, Turbo Challenge 2 is every bit as good as the original game and looks set to dominate the softcharts for the next couple of months.

Living life in the fast life has proved to be remarkably lucrative for the Sheffield-based software company with no less than four highly-rated motor racing games grabbing top-ten positions within the last year. The success of Supercars 2, Team Suzuki, Toyota Rally and the original Lotus have firmly established Gremlin's credentials as a force to be reckoned with in the car and bike sim market, and the company firmly believe that Turbo Challenge 2 will only reinforce their already formidable reputation.

Designing a sequel to what was widely acclaimed as the best racing game on the Amiga must have been a difficult task. By making superficial changes, such as adding extra tracks and tinkering with the graphics, Gremlin could have found themselves being accused of cashing in on the success of their first game. On the other hand, by implementing substantial changes and radically alterning the gameplay, they could unwittingly destroy the addictive qualities which made the original such a hit.

Thankfully, Lotus 2 manages to improve on the original formula without comprising the gameplay. Magnetif Fields have opted to drop the race track courses of the first game and have replaced them with a series of Outrun-style timed stages. This loses the competitive edge of the original Lotus, but the inclusion of a time element adds a sense of urgency to the proceedings.

The qualifying times start out quite easy, with any spare seconds added onto the next section, but as the stage progresses the driving conditions and course obstacles become more hazardous. Although there are no racing cars to compete against, the roads are still packed with other drivers, most of whom are incapable of steering in a straight line. Some merely hinder your progress by continually driving in front of you, while others actually try to ram you off the road.

The scenario involves the player in a mad dash across the United States during which you'll encounter a number of climatic and racing conditions ranging from rain and snow to fog and nightime driving. Each affects the handling of the car in different ways. For example, the Marshland stage has an abundance of water which causes the car to skid uncontrollably, while the Fog stage obscures upcoming bends and debris. This time, there's the chance to get behind the bonnet of both a Lotus Esprit and a Lotus Elan, as both cars are used in the game depending on the upcoming section. The Esprit has the fastest acceleration while the Elan is better at tackling corners and bends.

Extra points are awarded for reaching checkpoints and there's a bonus for any time left on the clock after a stage has been completed. Driving underneath the lorries in the city section also earns extra points, as does successfully negotiating the water jumps in the Forest section. There's also extra time bonuses on the Marshland and Desert sequences and a turbo-booster on the Storm section.

The split-screen has been retained for two-player races, but the one player mode now has a three-quarter display rather than having one-half of the screen redundant as in the original game. It's also possible to link-up two Amigas and have a four-player race, although i'm not sure how many people will bother to cart their Amiga round to a mate's house to have a game. Each player has a different coloured car, too, which helps make the action a lot clearer as does the variety of colours used for the drone cars.

Although the game uses the same control system as before, the gameplay has been enhanced to make it even more playable. Instead of smashing through numerous off-road signposts and shrubbery and being left stuck at the end of the track, once you've hit something you're immediately bounced back onto the road. Because the car doesn't slow significantly the qualifying times for each section have been kept tight to make the race even more exciting.

Each stage has its own set of graphics to differentiate between the various climatic conditions and look absolutely brilliant. The fog level, which is one of the stages included on this month's coverdisk, is especially stunning and, coupled with the in-game sound effects, add considerable atmosphere to the proceedings.

Other examples include the tumbleweed on the Marsh stage and thunder and lightning on the Storm section. There's also a number of smart in-game animations such as the water splash as each car ploughs through and sparks flying off the walls of the underground tunnels when a car smashes into the side walls.

In all, there are over sixty check-points and more than an hour's worth of driving in Lotus 2. With a difficulty level set just right so that each stage is progressively harder than the last, it'll certainly take you much longer than that to complete. Once you've played Lotus 2, you'll never want to play another race game again.