Top Gear 2
Top Gear 2 (AGA), developed and published by Gremlin Interactive in 1994.
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Player's Review
"BUY THIS GAME AT TOP SPEED We'll make this quick. You're holding the new, super-accelerated No. 1 World leader in race games. It's jammed with programming horsepower to keep you on the edge of your seat. Scream through 84 cities in 16 countries: twisting, turning, jumping, spinning and flipping at speeds over 200mph. Solo or head to head. Day or night. Rain or shine. Fog or snow. Plus, if you win enough prize money you can buy a better chance of winning with incredible engine, tyre, transmission, super speed nitro system and armour upgrades. Also there are many power ups on the track to keep you revved up to the redline. So get your rear in gear and sit back for the all action race experience of a lifetime. Simultaneous 1 or 2 player head to head racing."
Sequel to Top Gear released on the SNES by Kemco, developed by Gremlin Graphics and essentially a consolised version of Lotus Turbo Challenge on the Amiga retaining the forced 2 player view and a good update it was too with some great tunes. Top Gear 2 released first on the SNES in 1993 followed by the Genesis in 1994 and were equally well received. The Amiga received it's versions as well in 1994 for A500 class, A1200 and CD32.
The Amiga versions feel like an injustice as while they do mimic the SNES game faithfully, the way they have been implemented feels like an afterthought, done in a way just to make a few more quid from the Amiga faithful. Developed by Gremlin, the very same that brought us three excellent Lotus games and Jaguar XJ220 from Core expanding on the formula, Top Gear 2 could have seen its best version on Amiga. Instead we get what app[ears to be based on the Nigel Mansell race engine but somehow even worse. The A500 game runs bad on stock hardware, but actually pretty good on an an A1200 with a bit of fastram making for some smooth racing although bizarrely you are missing brake lights. It's overall presentation is horrible though with simply dithered down graphics from the A1200 or SNES game. The A1200 game doesnt seem to take any advantage of extra memory making for some long load times as well as choppy racing much like Nigel Mansell 1200 version. To make matters worse, the A1200 lost a piece of music (Top-Racer) during racing so we have to repeat the same two for 64 races. The A500 version has it but the disk space appears to have been lost to a much larger version of the Destruction music track on the 1200 game. The games are notably HD installable though which was a rare thing.
Enough ranting, what about the game. 16 countries each with 4 tracks making for 64 total races. That's quite a grind, but thankfully you are issued with a password between countries. Ideally you get a high finishing position for high rewards enabling you to upgrade car parts between races making victory easier. You get a limited number of nitro boosts to aid your progress through the pack and some tracks have pickups to award money, extra nitro boosts or instant speed ups. The tracks race pretty well and more so once you have the best tires fitted. You might get a fuel warning occasionally but I think that's more of a time limit as you can not collect more. The game does support split screen 2 player mode and well as music or sfx but you can only use one. In the longplay I do swap between settings to show them but it is annoying that you have to quite load into a race before being able to quite back tot he menu to change the setting. Only two pieces of music unfortunately and the sfx in the game is pretty bad. Why does nitro sound like an overflying plane! The CD32 release makes use of CD Audio solving the Music+SFX issue as well as much faster loading but the music is dreadful.
Overall, I don't think any care was taken to ensure a good release on Amiga. Extra memory could have been utilised to cache files aiding long loading times between races. Lack of music especially in this version makes the whole experience quite monotonous and a chore but at least the car handles well enough making the actual races quite easy. Completely shocked that we got an animated end screen but not so shocked to find that there is no credit roll or even global highscore table.
00:00:00 Title Music
00:02:30 Australia
00:22:05 Britain
00:43:58 Canada
01:05:16 Egypt
01:24:12 France (SFX)
01:40:16 Germany (SFX)
01:55:47 Greece
02:15:56 India
02:34:07 Ireland
02:52:50 Italy
03:12:07 Japan
03:29:34 Scandinavia
03:47:22 South America
04:06:08 Spain
04:24:42 Switzerland
04:42:53 United States
05:00:56 End
Sequel to Top Gear released on the SNES by Kemco, developed by Gremlin Graphics and essentially a consolised version of Lotus Turbo Challenge on the Amiga retaining the forced 2 player view and a good update it was too with some great tunes. Top Gear 2 released first on the SNES in 1993 followed by the Genesis in 1994 and were equally well received. The Amiga received it's versions as well in 1994 for A500 class, A1200 and CD32.
The Amiga versions feel like an injustice as while they do mimic the SNES game faithfully, the way they have been implemented feels like an afterthought, done in a way just to make a few more quid from the Amiga faithful. Developed by Gremlin, the very same that brought us three excellent Lotus games and Jaguar XJ220 from Core expanding on the formula, Top Gear 2 could have seen its best version on Amiga. Instead we get what app[ears to be based on the Nigel Mansell race engine but somehow even worse. The A500 game runs bad on stock hardware, but actually pretty good on an an A1200 with a bit of fastram making for some smooth racing although bizarrely you are missing brake lights. It's overall presentation is horrible though with simply dithered down graphics from the A1200 or SNES game. The A1200 game doesnt seem to take any advantage of extra memory making for some long load times as well as choppy racing much like Nigel Mansell 1200 version. To make matters worse, the A1200 lost a piece of music (Top-Racer) during racing so we have to repeat the same two for 64 races. The A500 version has it but the disk space appears to have been lost to a much larger version of the Destruction music track on the 1200 game. The games are notably HD installable though which was a rare thing.
Enough ranting, what about the game. 16 countries each with 4 tracks making for 64 total races. That's quite a grind, but thankfully you are issued with a password between countries. Ideally you get a high finishing position for high rewards enabling you to upgrade car parts between races making victory easier. You get a limited number of nitro boosts to aid your progress through the pack and some tracks have pickups to award money, extra nitro boosts or instant speed ups. The tracks race pretty well and more so once you have the best tires fitted. You might get a fuel warning occasionally but I think that's more of a time limit as you can not collect more. The game does support split screen 2 player mode and well as music or sfx but you can only use one. In the longplay I do swap between settings to show them but it is annoying that you have to quite load into a race before being able to quite back tot he menu to change the setting. Only two pieces of music unfortunately and the sfx in the game is pretty bad. Why does nitro sound like an overflying plane! The CD32 release makes use of CD Audio solving the Music+SFX issue as well as much faster loading but the music is dreadful.
Overall, I don't think any care was taken to ensure a good release on Amiga. Extra memory could have been utilised to cache files aiding long loading times between races. Lack of music especially in this version makes the whole experience quite monotonous and a chore but at least the car handles well enough making the actual races quite easy. Completely shocked that we got an animated end screen but not so shocked to find that there is no credit roll or even global highscore table.
00:00:00 Title Music
00:02:30 Australia
00:22:05 Britain
00:43:58 Canada
01:05:16 Egypt
01:24:12 France (SFX)
01:40:16 Germany (SFX)
01:55:47 Greece
02:15:56 India
02:34:07 Ireland
02:52:50 Italy
03:12:07 Japan
03:29:34 Scandinavia
03:47:22 South America
04:06:08 Spain
04:24:42 Switzerland
04:42:53 United States
05:00:56 End
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