Power Drive
Power Drive, developed by Rage Software and published by U.S. 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!"
Developed as an A500 game which runs well enough but played on an A1200 for a slightly smoother ride thx to faster cpu. There are no AGA enhancements. The game was also released on the Mega-Drive, SNES and Jaguar and while the Amiga game is perhaps the lesser version, it's stands up well for it self and not a total embarrassment next to the console versions. Being a PAL only release the game makes full use of the higher resolution available.
Power Drive is a Rally driving game very much like the Neo-Geo Drift Out game. The game takes you through a series of tracks over eight countries. Your goal is to finish each track within a set qualification time. The events are a mix of time trials, vs and skill tests. In the vs events, you don't need to win, just make sure you finish within the qualification time but winning will add a bonus cash reward which helps a lot especially in the early game. Money is used to pay the fee for the next event as well as repairing your car. Some strategy is needed here as you don't want to overspend on the car and not have enough for the following event. You are also saving up for a more powerful car needed for future events. Not repairing the car will have negative effects resulting in lower finishing times and losing cash bonuses.
The game does have a bit of a learning curve and can be tricky to play thanks to it's steering mechanism. You cant just hit left/right as that will stall the car but instead roll it round the diagonals until your are facing the right way. You have a handy guide telling you about upcoming corners and nailing the slides can be quite fun. It only gets trickier though as you progress onto faster cars and tracks with many corners. Memorisation is a must and it becomes more frustrating than fun by the mid way point. There are pickups on the track to award time and money as well as the odd turbo boost! Once all the main events are complete, a short bonus event is played with no car repairs in between with a competition password awarded at the end.
Overall, this is a good but frustrating game just because of the speed and how little of track ahead you see but it is well put together, looks alright as well as having a very Amiga soundtracker style music. I do quite like the events that have additional gfx effects for weather and headlights all though due to the darkness, those tracks can be especially difficult. Disk loading is a little slow but not obnoxiously so.
00:00:00 Titles
00:02:32 Monte Carlo
00:13:45 Kenya
00:27:10 Sweden
00:46:22 Corsica
01:06:50 Arizona
01:25:00 Finland
01:41:50 Australia
02:01:15 Great Britain
02:27:30 Win
02:28:30 Bonus Event
Developed as an A500 game which runs well enough but played on an A1200 for a slightly smoother ride thx to faster cpu. There are no AGA enhancements. The game was also released on the Mega-Drive, SNES and Jaguar and while the Amiga game is perhaps the lesser version, it's stands up well for it self and not a total embarrassment next to the console versions. Being a PAL only release the game makes full use of the higher resolution available.
Power Drive is a Rally driving game very much like the Neo-Geo Drift Out game. The game takes you through a series of tracks over eight countries. Your goal is to finish each track within a set qualification time. The events are a mix of time trials, vs and skill tests. In the vs events, you don't need to win, just make sure you finish within the qualification time but winning will add a bonus cash reward which helps a lot especially in the early game. Money is used to pay the fee for the next event as well as repairing your car. Some strategy is needed here as you don't want to overspend on the car and not have enough for the following event. You are also saving up for a more powerful car needed for future events. Not repairing the car will have negative effects resulting in lower finishing times and losing cash bonuses.
The game does have a bit of a learning curve and can be tricky to play thanks to it's steering mechanism. You cant just hit left/right as that will stall the car but instead roll it round the diagonals until your are facing the right way. You have a handy guide telling you about upcoming corners and nailing the slides can be quite fun. It only gets trickier though as you progress onto faster cars and tracks with many corners. Memorisation is a must and it becomes more frustrating than fun by the mid way point. There are pickups on the track to award time and money as well as the odd turbo boost! Once all the main events are complete, a short bonus event is played with no car repairs in between with a competition password awarded at the end.
Overall, this is a good but frustrating game just because of the speed and how little of track ahead you see but it is well put together, looks alright as well as having a very Amiga soundtracker style music. I do quite like the events that have additional gfx effects for weather and headlights all though due to the darkness, those tracks can be especially difficult. Disk loading is a little slow but not obnoxiously so.
00:00:00 Titles
00:02:32 Monte Carlo
00:13:45 Kenya
00:27:10 Sweden
00:46:22 Corsica
01:06:50 Arizona
01:25:00 Finland
01:41:50 Australia
02:01:15 Great Britain
02:27:30 Win
02:28:30 Bonus Event
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