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Days Of Thunder |
Copyright/Publisher: Mindscape, Conversion By: Tiertex Ltd,
Genre: Racing Sports, Release Year: 1990, Number Of Players: 1
The Cruise Missile, Tom himself has done his stint in Top Gun and comes down to
Earth for car racing action at 200mph around the Daytona racetrack in the game
of the film.
As Cole Trickly you're in the race for the Stock Car Championship Trophy
against 20 other Stock Car drivers. Before each race, a qualification round
determines your position on the grid for the race.
A car status display (C64 version only) shows your tyre wear, and you'll need
a pitstop to change them, repair the engine (C64 only), tweak steering (Amiga-only)
and refuel.
Finish a race with a fast enough lap speed and it's onto the next circuit.
Cole's sponsor, Harry Hogge, sends through telegrams judging your performance
throughout the Championship.
The Amiga version has external viewpoints including Sky Cam and trackside views
along with options to define the number of cars (from 5 to 20) and laps (minimum
of 10), parade lap length and level of detail.
A Player vs Player modem facility is also offered. For the race itself, the
Amiga version has a first-person perspective while the C64 version has a
third-person, behind-the-car viewpoint.
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PHIL |
You'll have days of boredom playing the Amiga version. As with Indy 500, driving
round an oval track soon gets tedious. Unlike that game, though, there's very little
challenge to keep you playing. Robin got through to the last race in a few hours,
only to be disqualified by a parade lap glitch.
The C64 game is a bit more interesting. I especially like the start-up and
crash scenes, which flick to a speedy side-on view to show a different perspective.
As with the Amiga game siz looped tracks offer little variety, but the game is
fast and plays all right.
Presentation is good generally, with telegrams between races to tell you what your
sponsor thins. If you're a fan of the movie and don't mind the dated look of the racing,
this should keep you happy for a while.
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BIN |
Nope, I don't know what went wrong but all the thrills and spills of 200 mph
Stock Car racing have been reduced to 20 mph or so in the Amiga Days. With a
totally unconvincing illusion of speed and barely adequate 3-D car shapes, it
just fails miserably to capture anything like the pace of the real thing -
the graphical detail level option adding nothing to speed it up. Hard Drivin''s
got the realism, the convincing 3-D effect and speed to beat this. With a
very weak Dave Whittaker soundtrack, as well, Days just doesn't get off the
starting grid.
With the C64 version being a conversion of the Nintendo game at least playability
is assured. Unfortunately it's all far too simple and limited in execution with
pit stops being the only thing to offer scope far tactics.
The cars lack much in the way of intelligence (or maybe their go-for-you tactics
are meant to very quickly frustrate the player), there's little in the way of
backdrop variety and the speed effect doesn't match the car speed at all.
Pleasing gameplay and nice start-up presentation plus attractive crash scenes
isn't enough to keep you hooked.
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