Turbo Racing review - Nintendo Entertainment System

Strap yourself into your mega-speed road racer and ready yourself for the trials and tribulations of the life on the Formula One circuit! Turbo Racing has a lot in common with the ageing coin-op classic, Pole Position, in that the action is based around a scrolling 3D track and your objective is simple. Use your racing skills and guide your speed monster through the traffic to the coveted number one slot.

Al Unser Jr (a bit of a big light in the USA when it comes to driving fast cars) has officially endorsed this Nintendo driving game, and the programmers have taken every opportunity to use his inane smiling features wherever possible...

What the Mean Machines staff thought

Being a bit of a speed freak, I thoroughly enjoyed playing this. The 3D update is smooth, fast and convincing and the computer opponents are no dummies, so you really do have to race to get a decent grid position, making the game challenging and exciting. The most important thing in a race game is that the action is fast and exhilarating, and I found that with Turbo Racing this is certainly the case - the opposing cars weave about and if you're not concentrating it's easy to spin off on a corner. Nintendo race games have been thin on the ground up until now - so if you feel the urge to warm your turbos, take this for a test drive immediately.

Turbo Racing is a pretty playable game - your Formula One car is easy to control and the feeling of speed when you ignite your nitros is quite neat (the screen even shakes!). The 3D update is fast and realistic, although the graphics tend to flicker when things get very busy, and the roadside obstacles are very plain. There are a lot of tracks, and it takes quite a while to learn them all, and the computer opponents are also challenging, so it takes plenty of practice before you start winning races. Still, if you're prepared to stick with it, Turbo racing offers plenty of thrills and spills for a speed freak.

Have your say about this review

Laurie - 20 Jun 2008, 13:03 GMT

First things first, Al Unser Jr. constantly gives you a thumbs up to which you will inevitably reply with two fingers at the TV screen. Annoying as junior is, the game is half decent for a NES racer. It could be argued, however, that this is like saying a baboon mooning in your face is half decent for an evenings entertainment. Yes, it is different but surely there are better ways to spend your money? There were so many superb platformers on the NES and equally many superb racing games on other systems at the time (Chase HQ PC Engine, Super Hang On Megadrive, Turbo Outrun C64) that it is hard to make a case for Turbo Racing. The screen shudder when you hit turbos is naff and the cones used as road side objects make it feel like your speeding through roadworks on the M4 near the Dyffed junction outside Swansea on a wet Sunday morning (which I have also done and can report that it is infintely more fun than playing this game.) You could have gone down the arcade when this was out and put 20p into Turbo Outrun saving yourself in the process £39.80, which is about as damning an indicment as any.

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