The Cycles

Copyright : Accolade | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

This is a driving experience that was perhaps (at least in the computer world) more popular in the late 80s and early 90s arcade games, anyone remember the huge Hang-On bike that you had to sit on and look a prat?

Accolade certainly did not push the boat out with this low brow bike racing game, there is obviously no storyline as such except for the aim of the game. You must race around many different tracks in countries such as Japan and America and defeat the computer openents by first qualifying.

Of course you are given the usual options such as Practice, Single Race and Championship Circuit and I strongly recommend that your practice first otherwise you may as well just delete the game or throw away the cassette because the controls are very fiddly indeed, couple this with other problems detailed below and you have a nigshtmlare game in front of you.

Graphics

There really isn?t much to say about the old Bike simulator from yesterday, we didn?t have super 3D cards and graphics were nothing like they are today so we can?t expect very much out of the old 2D games - and that is what we get in this poorly written game from Accolade.

Now when you play your average race car simulator (Sega Rally for example) you can either sit in the car or view it from the outside - that?s fair enough and in my opinion the best way to do it. However you cant sit inside a motorcycle because there is no inside at all so why did Accolade go about it this way? the graphics suffer because of it and it does nothing to the gameplay.

Sound

The sound is average to say the least, in fact the most interesting sound in the game is the sampled "Accolade Presents" that we have all been used to for the past 10 years or more. The motorbike sound lets out a high pitched "ping" noise until you actually start moving and after that it?s the only sound in the game, no screaching, breaking or nothing.

Gameplay

As for gameplay well, as I said earlier because of the way the game players view has been set you simply cannot have any idea when to turn, how far you are turning, whether you are hitting the sides or anything - basically this game is for nut cases only. Perhaps if the view was correct the game could have been scored and played fairly and if it was released today it would get the same treatment if not worse than Daikatana.