Classic Moments: Super Skidmarks

Nick Thorpe recaptures all the best bits from Acid Software’s top-down racing game

» Platform: Amiga 1200 » Developer: Acid Software » released: 1995

Super Skidmarks is a pretty chaotic game at the best of times. With up to eight cars in any given race, carnage is a certainty and winning relies on your ability to bully your way through the pack just as much as your cornering skill. Multiplayer games quickly become rowdy affairs that inspire jostling and shouting amongst friends, but that’s all before a game-changing introduction.

As you dig through the menus, you find an option to attach caravans to the vehicles. The number of cars is immediately cut in half. Can a four-player race really be as much fun as one with eight cars? The answer is an emphatic, ‘Yes!’ – the caravans throw off the handling of your cars in a way that only adds to the turbulent nature of the game’s racing. The longer vehicles are easier to smash into, and the caravans almost become flails with which to bash your opponents. Top Gear should never have destroyed all those poor, innocent caravans – they’d have had far more fun racing with them.