Forget the Ferraris and the Porsches, what you really want is a little buggy to sit in. Give it plenty of poke in the shape of a rear-mounted engine with a top speed of 244kmh and do not bother with namby-pamby seat belts and roll cages and you are on your way.
Welcome to Powerdrift, Activision's conversion of the popular Sega coin-op. As if you had not already guessed, it is a driving game! There are a few subtle differences between Powerdrift and other racing coin-op conversions, not least the absence of a time limit. None of this rushing to reach the next checkpoint as the seconds tick away. That does not mean you can just take your own sweet time though: it is still a race.

Twelve competitors take part in each race, but you start in fourth position. Quite simply, the idea is to finish each race, but you start in fourth position. Quite simply, the idea is to finish each race in one of the top three places to qualify for the next stage. Each race is four laps of the track and there are five tracks to each course, with five courses to choose from.

The tracks tend to increase in difficulty as you progress. For example, the first couple of tracks will tend to have fewer and gentler bends while the later tracks will become much more difficult to negotiate and quite a challenge.
As well as bends there are other hazards, including suspended log tracks with no barriers on either side, so it is very easy to get the line seriously wrong on a bend and go plummeting into space. Then there are the jumps that can only be cleared if you are travelling over a certain speed.

Last but not least, there are the other racers, colliding with any of whom causes you to go into a spin. Not mucn time is lost as you are almost immediately back in the race, but your speed suffers and it takes a couple of seconds to get back up with the pack.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

Very fast and very colourful, it is so fast, in fact, that it sometimes gets a little confusing as to where you are supposed to be going. But after a couple of laps of each course, you will know them well enough. The jingles are standard coin-op fare, and the sound effects are fine for the job required.

JUDGEMENT

Wonderful stuff. As challenging and as addictive as you would expect from a hit coin-op but with much more gameplay depth than usual. A first-class racing game with all the essential ingredients to keep you in the driving seat.

Life is a little like playing Power Drift. You have your ups and downs, your lefts and rights, and sometimes you darn well don't know which way to turn. Then, to top it all, there are those shocking moments when you hit a bump so hard you go flying up into the air and wish you'd put on your pair of brown trousers afer all.

As you probably know (unless you're as thick as Heinz Country Vegetable Soup), Power Drift - the arcade game involved racing a buggy around 25 incredibly bendy tracks, whose height above sea level changed from second to second, and er... that was it. Apart from the massively undulating track, impressively fast graphics and mean-looking cabinet, Power Drift - the Activision game - is pretty much the same. So, take away the cabinet and what are you left with?

Well, a pretty darn rootin' tootin' good racer - that's what. Programmer ZZKJ, author of the brilliant Super Hang On on 16-bits has done an amazing job capturing the graphics, speed and spirit of the arcade version.

The first thing that strikes you is the sheer seed and smoothness of the billions of trackside objects scrolling towards you. Occasionally ally things move so fast that you can't tell the direction you have to head for next, which makes the game a little frustrating at times.

All the original's different track surfaces seem to be there and the varying effects they have on your vehicle at different points during the races have been kept. There's also a huge variety of tracks, 25 in all, broken down into five sequences of five tracks.

The range of background scenery is also massive, from big cities at nighttime to snowy Christmassy-style scenes - just right for this time of year. The impression of racing up and down the hills has also translated extremely well, and when cornering on gravel, you really do get the feeling that the car is slip slidin' round the bend.

Control is by joystick, keyboard or mouse and like Super Hang On. I found the mouse to be the most responsive method of control, although it did take some getting used to. Soundwise, there's an effective digitised "First lap... second lap..." etc each time you cross the line for a new lap and some fab skiddy and crashing sounds throughout. Alas, they've also kept that really annoying ditty which plays interminably. Hopefully, a button to turn this off exists somewhere, but I didn't find it.

Luckily though, a lot of attention has been played to the little details. For example, if you crash just before a steep bank, you find it difficult to get any speed up at first as you are attempting to restart on the bank. Similarly, if you are going under a bridge and any of the other buggies happen to be passing over it at the time, you see them zipping across the screen. Although this doesn't add to the gameplay, these sorts of little details can add a great deal to the appeal and staying power of a game. Possibly a good job in this case, as I found it fairly easy to get through the first tracks, and suspect that it won't take most gamesplayers that long to finish the game (You modest dog you. Ed.).

With the above tiny reservation taken into account, Power Drift is still an excellent conversion. The graphics and spirit of the original have been captured well for the Amiga release, so you should definitely jump in your buggy and head for the local software shop as fast as your little wheels will carry you. It's a stonker of a game.