One of the biggest disappointments of my life came when I was about seven or eight years old. I think it was Halloween, but it might have been Christmas, and occurred at a fancy dress party held at our local parish church. Now my mum is dead good at sewing and had spent days working on what turned out to be an absolutely top wizard's outfit - pointy hat, moon-and-stars jacket, magic wand - the lot. I was a bit shy as a lad and didn't really want to go, but after a little persuasion and the threat of a spanked bottom, along I toddled in all my regalia.

On arriving my mood improved almost instantly, not only because I spied the Grandstand "Pong" video game and numerous chocolate treats that constituted the prizes, but because all the other kids' outfits were completely cack. Well I was laughing, I can tell you, as that sorry bunch of misfits traipsed hopelessly around the parish hall in dress that looked about as fancy as a Michael Foot overcoat. Pong was mine for the taking!

When it was time for the prize giving I sat between my parents with a smug grin on my greedy little face - a grin that would soon turn to utter disbelief as some girl or other from my class at school was ushered towards the makeshift stage and presented with the fabled Pong as a reward for her pathetic-looking fairy outfit.

"But well done to everybody, especially Paul Roundell - and his mum!" boomed our compere jovially. All was not lost - at least I'd won the sweets. "And now ladies and gentlemen, please give a big round of applause to our infants for last week's smashing play." He continued, whereupon a dozen or so five-year-olds trooped towards the front to be dutifully furnished with spangles and Texan Chew Bars. Scandal! The sweets were for the kiddies and I would go home empty handed for there was... No... Second... Prize...

Video games have come a long way since the days of Pong - now renamed the Sega Master System - and Thalion are taking a bit of a risk in thrusting yet another racing game into a market already overcrowded with mediocre offerings. If No Second Prize is to have a hope in hell of raking in a decent chunk of the Christmas loot it will have to provide us with substantially more entertainment than the vast majority of its predecessors.

It does - in fact I think it's safe to say it's one of the very best racing sims around, and it even has a story. The most completely fabulous one-of-a-kind biketastic dreamcycle in the world is up for grabs - the owner is unknown but has offered his machine as a prize to whoever proves themselves as the best motorcycle racer in the cosmos.

Competition has been narrowed down to just six riders who must now race head to head for the ultimate supremacy. You can choose whichever rider you want to be - some are particularly good on bends, or may be very fast, while others have a high hit point count, meaning they can sustain all manner of damage and continue racing unabashed.

After making this momentous decision you will then need to decide how to set up your bike. Basically this involves choosing a sensitivity setting for the mouse - no joystick option at all, which is a bit of a shame - and locking the gears onto either manual or automatic. Having done this, you're ready to race.

There are 20 tracks in all, and you must chug bravely round them all for points - coming last actually results in a deduction from your overall score.

Chug really wasn't the right word to use at all, as the game is incredibly fast. Viewed from a 3D driver's eye perspective, it will have you and anyone watching swaying from side to side as you swing around bends, under bridges and into surprised bystanders.

Changing gear manually involves toggling a couple of the keys, and is a bit tricky at first considering control is by mouse. The game has a replay mode, and you can watch your hopelessness from four separate angles including from a chopper - I enjoyed playing the replay backwards as it gave me the impression that I was actually overtaking someone.

Graphics and sound are pretty much what you would expect from this kind of game, but how could I complain when it's as fast as this?

Since my last encounter with a real motorbike resulted in treatment for abrasions in a Greek hospital, I might not be the best person to advise you about the difficulty, but it does seem very hard. In the races I did manage to finish I came sixth out of six every single time - there's nothing at all wrong with the control, once mastered - it's just hard.

Hard it may be - but I played it sold for many hours without becoming ever slightly frustrated and I'm dying for another go right now. Well done Thalion of producing one of the best racers I've seen.

Things seem to be hotting up of late for the two-wheel ton-up merchant. It seems like only yesterday we were wrestling with the realistic but terminally twitchy Red Zone from Psygnosis, while in this very issue we're kick boxing in EA's decidedly violent Road Rash.

Thus Thalion's No Second Prize emerges from the paddock with plenty of competition already on the grid. NSP is a fast-paced thrash around the world's most famous motorcycle circuits in pursuit of first prize (remember, there's no second one) - that only prize being not a Championship First, but for the ownership of the Sexiest Motorcycle in the World.

Some anonymous dude has fronted up this unique machine in the hope of attracting six monied privateers to duel their way through a 26-race season taking in such exotic locations as the Paul Ricard, Hockenheim and Oulton Park Circuits.

Totally unreal
As such, we're not looking at a terribly realistic outing along the lines of Team Suzuki. Although the view from the saddle, the filled polygons and the accurate tracks are reminiscent of GBH's offering, NSP is more of a throttle-to-the-stop thrash and aimed more at the speed freak than the Grand Prix buff.

Unusually for a motorcycle game, you get to choose more than just the colour of the bike you ride. Each of the six competitors has certain attributes, such as impressive top-end speed, or brilliance at corners or, for the more ham-fisted, the ability to take the knocks when thwapped full-tilt into the nearest tree.

Having chosen whichever rider suits your riding style, it's off to practise on any of the 20 tracks before the first race of the season. It soon becomes clear that the bike, while not all that easy to control, behaves much more sensibly than Team Suzuki's Suzis. Where a mere twitch of the mouse would have you veering wildly off course and into Mamola-ville in TS, the action in NSP is far more controllable, while still keeping up a fair old clip.

It's a mouse-only affair, which is fine by me, and merely requires holding down the right button to accelerate and the left to brake. Unless you want to be flash and use the manual gear change mode, which means keeping a hand hovering over the Amiga's keyboard.

Once into the races proper, things get a little more disturbing. Getting round Silverstone is job enough, but someone has taken the trouble to scatter bollards at some very inconvenient points around the track. Hit once and you'll damage the bike (which has a limited tolerance that ticks away until you stop for good) and lose places.

There also seems to be a fair number of riders who apparently spring up from nowhere. You can see the pack you're meant to be leading highlighted on a small circuit map, but other riders abound, creating mobile chicanes that add to the overall mayhem.

A bit backwards
It was after an encounter with one of these amateur riders that I found out you could do something totally brilliant: ride round the track the wrong way! I've always wanted to do this, but many racing games simply won't let you. Howling head-on for the leaders at a closing speed of around 400mph is great fun when you've given up on ever winning the race.

You also get to see the helicopter that follows the lead bike and provides one of the platforms for the four replay cameras that show you how you screwed up on that last chicane. It's reckoned that by studying replays you can learn the mistakes you're making and how to avoid them.

But most simulated track racing is so uncontrolled that it's more often than not a case of balls-out pace all the way (and scrape it round corners at silly speeds) so 'riding' technique rarely plays a part. Replay cameras are fairly pointless, but fun.

While lacking in the authenticity stakes, No Second Prize is a good halfway house between the mindless tharsh of Super HangOn and the hard-to-control realism of Red Zone and Team Suzuki. If it had the two-player mode of the now-defunct Palace Software's Hot Rubber, then we really would have something to write home about.

You may be aware by now, if you're a regular reader of AP, that I've recently become interested in motorbikes. Not passionately, you understand. Not in that obsessive, posters on the wall, books and magazines all over the house, only topic of conversation sort of way. I'm more your 'these motorbike things are quite a good idea' sort of a chap who's just realised how cheaply you can get around the place if you're prepared to get a bit cold and wet.

Nor, I have to say, am I obsessed by the idea of riding exceedingly quickly. Not for me the sleek race replicas with all their faring and hunch-backed riding positions. Give me a big far tourer and some heated handlebar grips and I'll be as happy as, er... well, I'll be as happy as a Tim that just got a big fat tourer with heated grips.

Ah yes, but I've racked my poor addled old brain and I can't think of a single thing that would make a game about riding around on a bike like that even remotely appealing. How, after all, can you make an entertainment about big fat bikes that don't go very fast and peope that wear cowboy boots?

You can't. So the next best thing for bike fans has to be a game about racing around jolly quickly. And that, oh dearly beloved, is exactly what No Second Prize is.

The game arrived while I was out of the office, so I came in late that night to play it. I loaded it up with no small amount of trepidation - I've tried this sort of thing before. The intro sequence looks particularly fabby - vector 3D a-go-go. But we've all seen groovy intros that belie the shoddiness of the game they prelude, so I kept my enthusiasm in check. Nice neat option screens let you choose whether to race, train, or load a saved season.

Then you choose your rider. There are six, each with their own strengths and weaknesses (including a hit point system for the rider and their bike). So far, so ordinary. The enthusiasm was still there, just bubbling under the surface, but as yet there was no reason to run whooping around the office.

Just the track selection to go now and I can get on with some racing. If you're practising, you can choose any of the 22 courses, but in a proper race season your choice is made for you. The tracks are familiar - Donnington Park, Thruxton, Hockenheim, etc - and there's plenty of info available on each. I chose Paul Ricard because it was a) the first one, and b) simple looking.

The race finally started. I couldn't believe my little eyes. What I thought I saw was a 3D world of shaded polygons that moved smoothly and realistically. But it couldn't be. That can't be done, can it? I mean, we've had countless games in here that use polygon 3D systems and they're slow and jerky and altogether not fun to play. Surely that's because silky smooth fast 3D isn't possible on an Amiga.

Another thing I thought I could see was a world whizzing past at breathtaking speed as if I were on a real bike. The white line down the centre of the road was shooting past in an alarmingly realistic way. And those trees - approaching slowly and the flashing out of sight on either side. This couldn't be right either. Surely things should just sort of blob past and you have imagine that it's a really convincing simulation. Maybe it's all just a dream.

Anyway, played on even though I was worried that my old eyes were deceiving me. The control system for motorbike games is a tricky thing to get right. You can have the Road Rash-type joystick control that makes no claims to realistic simulation. Or you can have the hopelessly slippy-slidy Red Zone system that tries desperately to be realistic but just, frankly, gets on your wick.

Or you can have the No Second Prize system which is mouse controlled and is so very nearly intuitive that you make allowances for it and blame yourself rather than the controls when you crash.

I have to own up at this point and say that I'm so stultifyingly bad at this game that, at the time of writing, I haven't actually finished a race without destroying my bike. But unlike some other games, this hasn't dampened my enthusiasm at all and I carry on playing, regardless of my total lack of ability, because it's fun.

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE
As well as being not particularly good, I'm also one of those strange people that alays turns the sound off when they play computer games - it's usually either dull and uninspiring or irritating beyond dreams of exasperation. Imagine my surprise, then, when I turned the sound and found atmospheric bike noises and Doppler-shifted sounds from the other bikes as I roared past them.

And the option-screen music? No plinky-plonky tat here, mate. There's a groovy tune with a '70s-style funk guitar riff that sounds most convincing in a vague Starsky And Hutch sort of way.

Much is made in the instructions of the replay option. Oh, actually, before I tell you about that. I should mention that there is a plot of sorts lurking in the game - it's got something to do with two really great bikes being built and one of them being destroyed and some people who decide to have a contest to see who should have the remaining one and there's no second prize and... I lost interest and stopped reading at this point.

Anyway, back to the action replay. There are four cameras that shoot the action. One is on your bike, one races along beside your bike; one follows your bike from the middle of the track, or thereabouts, and the final one is in a helicopter (which you can see) and follows the race leader.

At any point in the action you can get yourself a replay of the race so far by selecting one of the cameras (the race stops while you do so). Ah yes, but that's not the clever bit. Using the cursor keys you can fast-forward or rewind the recording to your favourite bit - the bit where you smash inot one of the other riders and take them out of the race is always quite satisfying - and the speeded-up action is almost as smooth as the normal speed version. Astonishing.

The only disappointment is that you can't use any of the external views while you're actually racing - you can only view things as seen from the handlebars of your bike. Still, how many times have you ever been driving down the street and been able to watch your bike/car from the outside? You'd need a particularly sophisticated radio control system, a stout rope and an especially rugged pair of roller skates. Or something. Wouldn't you?

I checked with the rest of the team and it turns out my eyes hadn't, in fact, deceived me. No Second Prize looks utterly, fabulously, smoothly, wonderfully, groovy. Well, that's probably veering a little towards hyperbole, but it does look and sound jolly good.

It doesn't have much direct competition, so as a motorbike racer it's the best so far. But it's also sufficiently god that it stands up pretty well against more conventional four wheeled racers.