SUPER CARS II

AMIGA/ATARI ST, 1991

This achingly Nineties top-down racing game had a career mode that, we’d venture, hasn’t been surpassed in driving games since. In addition to racking up your championship points as usual, against such legendary drivers as ‘Ayrton Sendup’ and ‘Crashard Banger’ no less, you were as busy off the track as you were on it. In between races you’d find yourself badgering your sponsor for more funding, avoiding the attention of environmental activists and rolling the solicitors of wealthy relatives for extra dough. It’s like Derek Trotter, the motor racing years.

You’d need every penny you could scrape together too, not just for repairs, but for an arsenal of weapons that would make Rambo blush. In the very lightly sanctioned world of

Super Cars II, if your driving skills aren’t quite up to scratch, simply bolt some homing missiles on to the front of your thinly veiled Alfa Romeo SZ and point them at the car in front’s exhaust pipe. Presumably this game’s definition of a clean overtake was one where you don’t get any of the remains of your opponent on your paintwork.

It’s a good job, then, that the split-screen multiplayer mode was more co-operative than competitive. As long as one of you crossed the line with a roadworthy vehicle, you’d both be able to progress through the championship. Which made it easy to claim it was an accident when there was the occasional friendly fire incident.

No matter how much ordnance you packed, you would still have to contend with the precision jumps, blind tunnels and unstoppable freight trains that peppered the various circuits, though. And all with a single-button-joystick control system that forced you to pick between manually operating the accelerator or the brake. Simpler times...