Power Drive
Power Drive, developed by Rage Software and published by US Gold in 1994.
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Player's Review
"Burn through blizzards in Monte Carlo at midnight or race in the blistering desert heat of Kenya. Test your rally skills through the dense forests, dizzy mountain passes and icy frozen lakes of 8 international courses! POWER DRIVE... drive it if you dare!"
Power Drive got released on a few home computers ands consoles of the time and this is the sole Handheld release. Squeezing the 16bit game down to run on an 8-bit handheld is quite the achievement. It has all the levels and the graphics well done and recognisable, surprisingly so with a surprisingly believable reflection effect on the ice tracks. It's not all high praise though as some compromises had to be made, most notable the music which is a zero effort porting of the 16-bit tracks. They are so bad I'm surprised the musician was credited. The usual sprite limitations also apple so a two frame flicker effect is applied to show all hud elements. It looks bad in emulation on modern screens but on the original blurry slow refresh screen it would have looked static. The overall resolution is lower as you would expect yet the game retains the same limited visibility of the tracks of the bigger versions.
The game controls ok but somehow a little easier with the 2 button controls making it easier to drift turns but also oversteer so takes some getting used to especially after playing the one button Amiga game. The game takes place over multiple countries and terrain types allowing you to earn money in each one and save up for the faster cars. The levels switch between single lap time trials and two player, four lap rally races with the odd skill test thrown in. There are also night and rainy races but there are no light/weather effects to reflect these. Getting to the end of the game shows the victory screen and that's it. The game loops back to the titles and doesnt seem to remember your records. We don't have the extra rally races for the chance to win a prose code in this one.
Overall, its mostly an ok conversion with all the content but even though you have per country passcodes, the game can feel overly challenging and there is not a lot to motivate you to continue on. Something a bit more bite sized would have been better on the handheld. But lets not forget that truly awful music which will make you think the game should have been canned. The game chugs at times especially with music. I show a race at the end of the video using sfx mode and the framerate seems a lot more stable.
00:00:00 Titles / Credits
00:01:50 Monte Carlo
00:11:32 Kenya
00:24:08 Sweden
00:39:28 Corsica
00:55:00 Arizona
01:08:51 Finland
01:20:22 Australia
01:35:39 Great Britain
01:44:15 Great Britain 2
01:57:22 Ending
01:58:50 Time Trial / Race with sfx
Power Drive got released on a few home computers ands consoles of the time and this is the sole Handheld release. Squeezing the 16bit game down to run on an 8-bit handheld is quite the achievement. It has all the levels and the graphics well done and recognisable, surprisingly so with a surprisingly believable reflection effect on the ice tracks. It's not all high praise though as some compromises had to be made, most notable the music which is a zero effort porting of the 16-bit tracks. They are so bad I'm surprised the musician was credited. The usual sprite limitations also apple so a two frame flicker effect is applied to show all hud elements. It looks bad in emulation on modern screens but on the original blurry slow refresh screen it would have looked static. The overall resolution is lower as you would expect yet the game retains the same limited visibility of the tracks of the bigger versions.
The game controls ok but somehow a little easier with the 2 button controls making it easier to drift turns but also oversteer so takes some getting used to especially after playing the one button Amiga game. The game takes place over multiple countries and terrain types allowing you to earn money in each one and save up for the faster cars. The levels switch between single lap time trials and two player, four lap rally races with the odd skill test thrown in. There are also night and rainy races but there are no light/weather effects to reflect these. Getting to the end of the game shows the victory screen and that's it. The game loops back to the titles and doesnt seem to remember your records. We don't have the extra rally races for the chance to win a prose code in this one.
Overall, its mostly an ok conversion with all the content but even though you have per country passcodes, the game can feel overly challenging and there is not a lot to motivate you to continue on. Something a bit more bite sized would have been better on the handheld. But lets not forget that truly awful music which will make you think the game should have been canned. The game chugs at times especially with music. I show a race at the end of the video using sfx mode and the framerate seems a lot more stable.
00:00:00 Titles / Credits
00:01:50 Monte Carlo
00:11:32 Kenya
00:24:08 Sweden
00:39:28 Corsica
00:55:00 Arizona
01:08:51 Finland
01:20:22 Australia
01:35:39 Great Britain
01:44:15 Great Britain 2
01:57:22 Ending
01:58:50 Time Trial / Race with sfx
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