Elsewhere in this stupendous issue of Gamer you will find me singing in a loud voice the praises of Gremlin's other release, Premier Manager, and vowing to collar either Biff or Ben into reviewing Mansell so I can spend as much time as possible with my beloved Wycombe Wanderers.

Well, a true indication of the authority I wield is evident in the fact that here I am, reviewing them both. Have you ever noticed how much of a miserable sod Nigel Mansell is? It is unbelievable - the guy lives in a three million pound house in tax haven, and gets an eight figure salary for doing the thing he loves most, yet the only time we see any noticeable twitch of his moustache is when Ayrton Senna spins out off the track in a horrifying accident.

All credit to the bloke though - not only is he one of the few truly successful contemporary British sportsmen, but he also has to cope with the slobbering schoolboy adulation upon him by the ever-excited Murray Walker.

In order to supplement his meagre income, Nige has lent his name to the latest go-very-fast-around-a-track-'em-up from those Lotus-like fiends from Sheffield.

Ben had a good look at the game for his review in ST User Gamer, and was far from impressed, which worried me greatly as I didn't want to believe that the game I had been looking forward to so much was a small but pungent heap of Tibetan llama droppings. Nervously, I investigated...

On loading you are presented with a generous options screen that as well as offering you the standard gear and control method choices, also enquires politely as to whether you would like to "improve with Mansell" or take lessons in "driving school" before launching yourself into the full race season.

Well I'm no nance, and was raring for a bit of real racing action, but, dedicated chap that I am, thought it only fair to explore all the avenues so to speak. Driving school was my first stop, and the concept is very simple. Choose any track on which to practice - no other cars are present, and the maximum speed of your car is restricted, the idea being that this will enable you to learn how to control the car. Come on, please - I'm sure we can cope with moving the joystick from side to side and pressing the Fire button occasionally. One visit to driving school and you'll never return - it's daft.

Improve With Mansell allows us to zoom around the track to the accompaniment of a running commentary from the man himself. This is a much better idea than the Driving School - the racing line is indicated, and in theory the comments from Nigey-babes should teach us the best techniques to use.

In practice, however, whenever I tried looking up from the track at the snippets offered ("stay on the track", "avoid hitting things"), the result was invariably my car wrapped around some advertising hording or other. It's a nice touch, but not much help at all, I'm afraid.

After dispensing with all the frills and inconsequentialities it was time to get me some action. Every track from the 1992 Grand Prix circuit is here in all its macadamised glory - you can choose to race a single circuit, in which case you take your pick, or pack some clean clothes and a couple of new engines and opt for the full GP season.

The full season begins in South Africa and culminates in Australia as does the real thing. A handy intro screen gives some indication as to which bits on your car you should tamper with by outlining the nature of the track - bends, straights and so on.

You can if you wish get straight into a race, in which race you will find yourself at the back of the 12-car grid. Qualifying is a better idea - two laps round the track with just a couple of other cars provides an excellent (and a little too easy) chance of beginning the race on the front row.

As far as the gameplay goes, NMWC is good, but not great. The tracks are well laid out but the screen updates are just a bit too slow to simulate a Formula One racing car travelling at nigh on 200 miles per hour. The miniaturized track in the top corner of the screen succeeds where "Improve With Mansell" fails in providing you with as much in-race information as you need.

All it does is tell you where the cars are on the track, but then you're not really interested in the price of mild Brazilian cheddar when your cheeks are wobbling with G-force, are you?

One element of the game, which I suppose is realistic, but annoying nonetheless, is the sheer difficulty of overtaking other drivers. The only time I won any races was when I started in pole position.

Points are awarded as per the usual Grand Prix rules, and a place in the top three in any race earns a animated sequence which takes a while to load and would be better left out.

As you would expect from Gremlin, Mansell is a polished game, not without its faults, but which should appeal to race fans due to the options it sports and the full GP season.

Cor! The lad done well, didn't he? Nigel 'Our Nige' Mansell romps home to victory in the Forrmula One World Championship, and to celebrate, Gremlin launch their much-hyped Nigel Mansell's World Championship in the same year. Luck? Or inside knowledge and a smidgin' or ESP? We'll never know, but you've got to admit Gremlin were definitely at the right place at the right time, time time.

For your money, Mansell's World Championship provides you with an arcade-style racing game with the ability to tweak the cars (to a limited extent), and two practice modes. The first is a simple drive-around against the clock, on a circuit of your choice (the full season's 16 tracks are there). It's dead boring, and there are no other cars to jockey with.

Python-esque
The other practice mode is called 'improve with Mansell' and it features a rather poor representation of Our Nige's head and some abysmal mouth animation that would have made Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam cringe. Nigel 'speaks' via lines of text which are just far enough off-centre to distract you from steering straight. There's also a full-season championship mode which enables you to save your current position and continue over a few days.

Despite the gloss and smooth presentation, Mansell's tracks are both unrealistic and unconvincing, especially after you've been playing MicroProse's Formula One Grand Prix. OK, Mansell's World Championship isn't meant to be a simulation, but still, there are too few road-side objects and the ones that exist repeat too often. Besides, they're all pictures of Zool or Lotus 3 adverts, arrows or bits of digitised Lichtenstein artwork - not really right for that Grand Prix feel. And they are far too close to the kerbside, leaving you little room for error on tight bends.

The view is very flat - the perspective doesn't seem to work properly, and this reduces the feeling of speed and stops you from anticipating the corners properly. The graphics which scroll across the horizon are only about two screens wide,a d are truly bland - you feel like you're revolving in a drum because the view in the distance never really seems to change much.

Worse, the steering seems wonky because the hands on the wheel change position according to the piece of track you're on - nothing to do with the way you're moving the joystick. The amount of steering lock you can use changes depending on whether the current track section is straight or cornered left or right. While this doesn't directly affect playability, it does seem a bit odd.

At first all you notice is that the car seems to be sliding the front-end everywhere, and it's only when you stop and see how things move that you realise it's a tick to fool the eye - one that doesn't really work and only serves to confuse. It's done to give the feeling of 'opposite lock around the corners', but it just looks like your steering rods are out of alignment.

Mansell's sound effects are, sadly, pathetic - real 1988 stuff. Sad little buzzes and rain that sounds. Like white noise on a radio is not exactly mood-enhancing stuff. The front-end music is better, but nobody's going to buy a game just for that, are they?

Crash and burn?
Racing against opponents is (as always) a lot more fun than racing against the clock. But even this isn't as good as it could be. Most of the circuits are too narrow to overtake properly, and the result is that you usually end up clipping something as you pass. For some obscure reason, your opponents have an advantage in this situation - you very often end up back in first gear with your fot flat on the boards trying to get your speed back, while the guy you hit (or hit you) goes whizzing off into the distance unperturbed.

The game could have been a biggie, (and let's face it, it probably will be, whether I get annoyed with it or not) but instead it is bland, uninspiring and a bit tedious - not really much of an accolade to 'Our Nige', the first British World Champ since 1976. Shame. He deserves to have his F1 days remembered in a better light than this. It's a real let-down after Formula One Grand Prix. OK, so maybe that's spoiled us, but it's set standards which Gremlin's offering hasn't even come close to.

Sure, you're going to say 'F1GP is a sim - not an arcade game' and that's fair comment. But it makes no difference when you find an arcade-racer, Mansell's World Championship isn't even as good as Lotus 3. This is sad, considering it's a similar game from the same software house. In fact it's on a par with the Continental Circus and maybe Super Monaco GP with less graphics. Even Vroom! is faster and smoother - and that has a two player mode, which Mansell doesn't.

Mansell's F1 chapter closes and next year he'll be racing Indy 500. At least he'll have an excuse for going round in circles. Gremlin don't, and they've brought us right back to the dawn of Amiga racing games with this one.

Aah yes. The thrill of the race, the heart-pounding rush as you take a competitor on the inside of the chicane, the grim determination clouding your face as you zoom up the straight. We are in the motor racing world, and I love it. Now, I will have to admit right away that I do not know a lot about this sport, but maybe there is not that much to know. I mean, isn't it just a load of people who like to drive cars very fast getting together and, er, trying to drive faster than each other? I mean, that is right, isn't it?

The game bears Nigel Mansell's name, and it is going to be popular because he is. It has got his picture on the front and everything. But a lot of people have been waiting to see what the game is like. Thus starts the controversy, because most people in the office who copped a look while I was playing expressed disappointment, some quite violently, and came out with some very valid reasons why it is noth worth buying. Somebody chucked a copy of Vroom at me to prove the point, and it all started to look a bit inevitable. But then comes the big question - why did I have so much fun playing it? Why is it that I am going to sneak it out of the office so that I can play it at home? These questions need to be answered.

All right, let us talk about the game. It is a bit of a halfway house, being a cross between a simulator and an arcade game. You play Nigel Mansell, although you can change your name if you want, and you take part in the full 1992 Grand Prix season. As well as going for the full season you can also choose to race one circuit, from any of the Grand Prix tracks, in a one-off. If you are new to all this, like me, then you get a chance to practice a course without the hindrance of other cars, and there is also an option to improve your driving with Nige himself. Unfortunately, this is a bit crap. You go round the track and a picture of Nige appears on the screen to tell you what you are doing wrong. There is a track line to give you an indication of where you should be on the road, which is very handy, but Nige's comments are mainly restricted to completely obvious things like "keep on the road" and "go on, speed up". Thanks, Nigel.

This aside, you really want to get stuck into the races and start enjoying the game itself. If you are doing a single track race, you are given a choice of where you want to race first of all. The tracks are not completely accurate representations of the real thing (for some reason the Silverstone is two years out of date, so I am reliably told), but they are fun anyway and they all vary in difficulty and require different driving skills. The weather conditions during the race depend on where you are racing (obviously, it is not going to be anything but sunny in Mexico). Sometimes there might me some rain or threatening clouds, and all this combines to give you a lot of variety in the races you will be running.

THE HITS KEEP ON COMING
Before you start you can set up your car using the Tuning Your Car option. Here you can choose what type of tyres you want to use - hard, soft, wet (that is worth an 'ooer', I think). Obviously, if it is raining you want to choose wet, but if the rein stops you might want to go into the pits and change them, as they wear out quicker. Soft tyres improve the grip and make cornering easier, but need changing more often (maybe twice in the race).

In this section you also choose your gear ratio between low, medium and high - low gives you good acceleration but reduces the top speed, medium has a balance of speed and acceleration and high gives top speed with less acceleration. You pays your money, you makes your choice. You can choose between automatic and manual gears, but I prefer auto because you do not really want to be bothered changing gears while you are roaring round a track. But you do get more control with manual gears.

OZONE FRIENDLY AEROFOIL
Finally you can choose how your aerofoil is positioned, which affects cornering and all that stuff. I left all these setting on default, except when the weather conditions looked a bit menacing.

Before racing you can also change the control method between mouse, joystick or keyboard. Go for the joystick, it is more exciting. While we are on control, you can also use the FreeWheel joystick. This looks like a steering wheel (actually I suppose it is a steering wheel) and you hold it in mid air and steer it to control your car. It is not supplied with the game, so I did not have a chance to use it, but it undoubtedly makes you look a complete floppy brain while you are playing.

You can go straight to the race, but you won't be positioned very well on the starting grid. Instead, you can choose to qualify, where you have to do one lap and the time you take determines where you are on the grid. There are a couple of other cars which you have to avoid, but you are not actually competing against them. Once this lap is done, you are ready to go. The first thing you notice is that the graphics are rather smart. The backdrops look attractive and atmospheric, and the cars themselves are impressive.

The sound effects are a bit weak though - acceleration sounds more like an electric shaver. Still. You get used to it quickly and it is good to have the sounds to give you some impression of being on the circuit. And the racing itself? Very exciting. I got completely hooked on this, mainly because after a few races you really start getting the hang of the controls and actually doing well.

It is not as smooth as Vroom, but it looks a lot nicer, and there is more excitement generated by the Grand Prix atmosphere and the fact that you are Nigel Mansell. It is not as thorough a simulator as F1GP but its arcade feel makes this unimportant. It is how much fun you have while playing a game that really counts and I had loads. If you have got Formula One Grand Prix or Vroom and you are happy with those thank you very much, then you probably won't need this.

But if you are looking for your first racing game, and you fancy soaking up the atmosphere of the Grand Prix, then you won't be disappointed with this game.

Mansell's scored 79 per cent in February's Gamer - not bad by any means, but certainly not indicative of the type of product we've come to expect of Gremlin over the last couple of years.

The main reason for this relatively low mark was the speed and smoothness of the racing - always an important factor in a racing game - or rather, the lack thereof. With the difficulty set as it was, the updates were too slow, and therefore too jerky, to present an accurate simulation of high speed racing, and consequently Mansell found itself lacking in the excitement department.

The first noticeable improvement is the speed of loading, which is only to be expected when you consider the capabilities of the A1200.
Once loaded the game offers exactly the same as did its multi-compatible counterpart, as it is of course nothing more than an enhanced version.

Scenery-wise is no change - or at least, not in the way it looks. The speed it zips by at though has changed dramatically. Gone are the jerky updates, replaced by moderately fast, smooth 3D scrolling, improving control over the car a great deal.

Difficulty in overtaking other racers is still there, but now instead of being frustrating it makes play more challenging due to the overall improvements in gameplay.

Disk swapping is minimalised thanks to your 3Mb of RAM, and even the winning sequence I complained about originally takes much less time to appear at the end of the race.

Whereas the mass market version of NMWC is nothing more than a good quality racer in a large field, the A1200 promotes this attempt to the front line of the starting grid with the likes of Lotus 3 and Jaguar XJ220. I still don't believe Gremlin have gone as far as they can with the A1200 however, and look forward to testing out the first specific race game for the machine.

The A1200, eh? (etc) More colours, more memory, faster processor - all that's fab stuff to be sure, but the very best thing about it is that it gives us the chance to review everything twice. Tim's already seized the opportunity to say that he didn't think Zool 1 was all that good actually, and now I'm going to do much the same for Nigel Mansell's World Championship.

Our original review (by the self-same Tim, in fact) gave this 78% on the grounds that it was "good fun to play", which is a good enough reason in my book, but the fact is, it isn't. Sorry, Tim.

Y'see, for a game to be fun (in my opinion) there has to be some sense of achievement as you play through it, and for that you need some kind of challenge. I played the original version of the game only very briefly,. So, I was expecting a fairly tough time when I loaded this up, driving games not really being my strength (I'm morally opposed to the concept of having to slow down sometimes for the tricky corners - that's not what games are about, mate), but at first I thought I'd accidentally started the game on 'Junior Beginner Idiot' level.

Without turning my car, doing any practice or having a go at 'Improve With Mansell' ("Drive Faster! Do Not Hit Things!"). I dived straight in, got a pole position qualifying time despite spending most of the qualifying lap driving cross-country, then proceeded to win each of the next three races by at least three-quarters of a lap (which isn't bad in a three-lap race) without really trying. I got bored after that.

Even if you're really crap, though, this still isn't any fun. If you do manage to get yourself stuck behind some opposition, you'll be alternately frustrated at how difficult it is to pass cars which are half the width of the track, and surprised at how if you hit them hard enough you can go straight through like they weren't there at all.

What's really odd is that this game has achieved the level of success it has when there's obviously superior stuff out there. F1GP shouldn't need me to tell you how good it is by now, but Vroom looks lots nicer than Nigel's (there's more varied scenery for a start), it sounds far better, it's just as fast, it's got more depth and there's a lot more opposition to battle with. Yet it sold nothing at all. Life, eh?

But hey, maybe all this isn't going to persuade you. Maybe you're a NMWC fan, just bought an A1200, and wondering if it's worth buying this again. After all, Gremlin claim "enhanced graphics (additional pit animation not featured in original Amiga version!), faster frame rate and greatly improved disk management".

For confirmation, I checked with Tim, Tim? "Hmm, I'm not sure if those clouds were there before, I think that might be now. It's not significantly faster, as far as I can tell. Off the top of my head, I can't really see ay noticeable improvements."

I'm with Tim on this one. While I'm quite prepared to be proved technically wrong (scientific tests clearly showing 55 rather than 50 frames a second, a man with a stopwatch pointing out of a three-second decrease in loading times, that kind of thing), the simple fact is that this doesn't feel at all different to the original game. And I think we've covered that pretty adequately already.