We all know this game. The classic SEGA racing game has been in everything from boring Shenmue games to the excellent Yakuza series and ported to near everything. Was the Spectrum version good? Damn right it was!

From its first boot this game oozes playability. Go fast then go faster, win races, ram into other bikes (what do you mean that isn’t how you play?) The game is about pure racing with no gimmicks and I loved it.

The Spectrum port is not the greatest outside the arcade but for speed and looks on an 8bit machine its pretty much as good as it gets. You get some nice toggles that are not really needed but nice to have them included, such as the ability to turn attributes off, aka colour bleed. Now most Speccy owners will argue, myself included, that bleed is part of the charm and is best when implemented on purpose but not all and so you can turn on limited colours that erase the issue. Myself, I prefered them on.

You can also adjust how the bike turns and IMO it just needs to be on High all the time. Medium works… just, but you would have to be Mystic Meg to work on Low because you need to predict the corners far more than I can!

Want a fast racer that really does feel like the Arcade? Can do no wrong. A very rare max rating from me.

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