American Turbo King

Copyright : Virgin Mastertronic | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

You are one of Americans top stunt car drivers that along with many others must prove how good you really are on one of the most deadly and dangerous race course tracks ever built, you will have to dodge rocks, trees, jump over hills, avoid oncoming bomb attacks and much more if you want to become the ultimate race car driver in the USA.

Or something very close to that....

Graphics

Released during the time when over head racing games like this one had increased in popularity and the creators Mastertronic couldn?t stop pushing them out the game wasn?t given that much of a welcome due to most CPC owners already having 5 or 6 of these games in their collection.

The graphics in American Turbo King are pretty well drawn with a fairly high amount of detail given to the floor and surrounding objects on each and every level, the thing that hits you the most is the not so fantastic colour scheme in which Mastertronic have decided to use one colour for each of the tracks (see screen grabs 1 and 2 below). Those that owned a GT65 green screen monitor certainly didn?t miss out on any fantastic colours in this title, screen grab #2 which is taken from level 2 of the game wouldn?t look much different on your monitor as it would on your friends who had the more expensive colour model.

Sound

Sound is pretty nice with some great music on offer between levels and a few explosion sounds when your car is hit by oncoming traffic or bombs falling from the sky, those of you that have owned previous Mastertronic titles of the same game style will more than likely recognise that the them in this game is almost identical to all the others - lazy or just common practice? you decide.

Gameplay

As for gameplay, well the idea is to get from one side of the race course to the other without hitting any objects in front or behind you and trying to avoid the other cars that will be racing along with you. You do not need to worry about your possition in the course because this isn?t a race for speed but a race to show how well you can handle your car in this type of situation.

It?s a fairly easy game with a nice control system and not overly fast moving scrolling, the main problem is that because of the cut-off space at the top of your screen it can be hard to guess whether your vehicle is going to hit something or not, our advice is to keep as near to the bottom of the screen as possible if you want to stay in one piece. You are given 3 lives to complete the game with, many of you will no doubt be hitting the reset button when you find yourself stuck in a corner and all 3 lives have been taken off you just for trying to get out - we don?t blame you at all.

If you are going to play this game it?s worth looking for the cheat or trained version before you start - a fairly good game but with a few flaws.