Continental Circus

Copyright : Virgin Mastertronic | Reviewed by : scooby1970

Continental Circus is one of Taito's greatest conversions for the Amstrad machines. As usual in racing games, you have to go around the track and kick some artificial-intelligent racing driver's butt! This racing game sets you different positions though in which you need to qualify for each race. Let's take a look at one of Taito's finest...

Graphics

This is where the game really shines, it uses a great colour palette and has some of the best designed sprites around. The sense of speed is great, and you can feel your adrenalin rush as you take those curves. Roadside objects are well designed, as are the backdrops and the other vehicles.

The race-tracks themselves are identical to the arcade version, in fact the only difference I could see from the arcade version was that the pit-stops on the CPC version were just indents in the main track as opposed to the ?real? pit-stops in the game.

Sound

As soon as you kick into this game, you realise that the game sound is very impressive! It is almost identical to the arcade version, right down to the start theme and the sounds it makes when you reach your goals on time.

When you overtake other cars, then you hear them roar past. You can also tell how fast you are going with the sound that your engine makes.

Gameplay & Final Comments

Continental Circus on the CPC is by far one of the greatest racing games of the 8-bit and 16-bit era. Compare this game to the Speccy and C64 versions and the gameplay, graphics and sound are way ahead of the competition! Even compared to the awesome Amiga version (which is almost arcade perfect), the CPC holds it's own very well.

As a game, you obviously have to race around the track, and with each track you are set a target position in which to finish before you progress to the next track. Sometimes this can be quite hard, but once you get used to the tracks and the way the other cars react, then you can really speed around the circuits.

This is one game every CPC owner should have played and owned. This is one game every CPC player should play!