Lamborghini American Challenge
Lamborghini American Challenge, developed and published by Titus Software in 1994 on Amiga 500 Disk. The CD32 version played here was not released singularly but published as a CD32 Special Issue 1 Covermount in December 1994 for £9.99.
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Player's Review
Bum up the highways of the USA at the wheel of your Lamborghini Diablo in the Crazy world of illegal Saturday Night Races. Put your driving skills to the test across 60 different routes. Weave through the traffic, beat off the competition, collide with your opponents and drive them off the road. Avoid roadworks, and most of all, watch out for those cops! Put your money where your mouth is! Bet on the winners and earn yourself a fortune to spend on entering more races and customizing your car. Many driving environments, city, desert, mountain roads, falling snow, pouring rain, night time driving and more."
Lamborghini American challenge is a rebranding of Crazy Cars III released a few years earlier but now with a licence deal from Lamborghini. It's received some minor updates though including a 2 player split screen mode and the option to save you game after four races or entering a new division with the A500 game. No save ability on the CD32 version but here we get two button support for activating the boost and much faster loading. The intro sequence from Crazy Cars 3 has been removed although that is no great loss. Maybe to make room for an extra music track on the betting screens. The main change the separates the two games though is the introduction of the two player splitscreen mode.
Another difference compared with at least the snes version (maybe pc) is that the car is still crazy cars red instead yellow. The goggles upgrade for visibility in night levels is not present.
Gameplay involves racing across multiple states across four race divisions. Your aim is to earn enough money for a chance to win the division races and win overall. Each race requires a different cost of entry and winning it is usually double the amount. Races have varying difficulty usually tied to cost of entry so you may need to buy some upgrades to get through them. Jumping right into the expensive races can be rewarding but also very risky as if you left no money in the bank, it could be game over if you lose. Also some tracks have a police presence, and if they get you, that could cost you your savings and end your game. Early upgrades to buy include better tires so you can get through races with weather and engine upgrade for a little speed boost.
The longplay shows going through all divisions to eventually win the game. I race every race in no particular order in order to show all levels. Normally you would apply some strategy to make it through the more rewarding races to beat the game in as short time as possible. Racing every race may cause you to lose the will to live, so don't try it. The boost feature is a cool looking speedup but unfortunately it is very expensive to replace so shouldn't be used unless really needed to catch up. I show this more in the final division.
Unfortunately it seems some bugs were introduced at least in emulation (Not verified on hardware) that were not an issue with Crazy Cars III. The music gets broken when entering the division races. It's not a game breaker but its makes the game appear broken. This is an issue in the Amiga 500 floppy game as well, IPF disk images and cracked versions played on 500/1200 and even HD installed through WHDLoad doesnt fix the issue.
Overall, it is an alright racing game and every bit as good as the 1992 release of Crazy Cars 3, but maybe a bit lacking by 1994. The cd version does not utilise any of the CD32s extra features apart from two button support and otherwise as identical to the floppy based version. A missed opportunity for cd background music keeping inline with the snes version. It maybe be best to play CC3 though to avoid the issues encountered.
Putting an Amiga 500 game on the cover of a CD32 magazine is an odd choice not really showing of the CD32 in a good way. The CD also includes playable game demos activated by holding specific button when booting the cd:-
Beneath a Steel Sky (Blue)
Bump and Burn (Green)
Super Stardust (Yellow)
Kid Chaos (Left)
Pinball Illusions (Right) (needs keyboard to play???)
Multimedia Machine (Play) (PD games and animations)
00:00:00 Division 4
01:11:05 Division 3
02:31:02 Division 2
03:44:04 Division 1
05:02:28 Quick 2 Player and Bad End
Lamborghini American challenge is a rebranding of Crazy Cars III released a few years earlier but now with a licence deal from Lamborghini. It's received some minor updates though including a 2 player split screen mode and the option to save you game after four races or entering a new division with the A500 game. No save ability on the CD32 version but here we get two button support for activating the boost and much faster loading. The intro sequence from Crazy Cars 3 has been removed although that is no great loss. Maybe to make room for an extra music track on the betting screens. The main change the separates the two games though is the introduction of the two player splitscreen mode.
Another difference compared with at least the snes version (maybe pc) is that the car is still crazy cars red instead yellow. The goggles upgrade for visibility in night levels is not present.
Gameplay involves racing across multiple states across four race divisions. Your aim is to earn enough money for a chance to win the division races and win overall. Each race requires a different cost of entry and winning it is usually double the amount. Races have varying difficulty usually tied to cost of entry so you may need to buy some upgrades to get through them. Jumping right into the expensive races can be rewarding but also very risky as if you left no money in the bank, it could be game over if you lose. Also some tracks have a police presence, and if they get you, that could cost you your savings and end your game. Early upgrades to buy include better tires so you can get through races with weather and engine upgrade for a little speed boost.
The longplay shows going through all divisions to eventually win the game. I race every race in no particular order in order to show all levels. Normally you would apply some strategy to make it through the more rewarding races to beat the game in as short time as possible. Racing every race may cause you to lose the will to live, so don't try it. The boost feature is a cool looking speedup but unfortunately it is very expensive to replace so shouldn't be used unless really needed to catch up. I show this more in the final division.
Unfortunately it seems some bugs were introduced at least in emulation (Not verified on hardware) that were not an issue with Crazy Cars III. The music gets broken when entering the division races. It's not a game breaker but its makes the game appear broken. This is an issue in the Amiga 500 floppy game as well, IPF disk images and cracked versions played on 500/1200 and even HD installed through WHDLoad doesnt fix the issue.
Overall, it is an alright racing game and every bit as good as the 1992 release of Crazy Cars 3, but maybe a bit lacking by 1994. The cd version does not utilise any of the CD32s extra features apart from two button support and otherwise as identical to the floppy based version. A missed opportunity for cd background music keeping inline with the snes version. It maybe be best to play CC3 though to avoid the issues encountered.
Putting an Amiga 500 game on the cover of a CD32 magazine is an odd choice not really showing of the CD32 in a good way. The CD also includes playable game demos activated by holding specific button when booting the cd:-
Beneath a Steel Sky (Blue)
Bump and Burn (Green)
Super Stardust (Yellow)
Kid Chaos (Left)
Pinball Illusions (Right) (needs keyboard to play???)
Multimedia Machine (Play) (PD games and animations)
00:00:00 Division 4
01:11:05 Division 3
02:31:02 Division 2
03:44:04 Division 1
05:02:28 Quick 2 Player and Bad End
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