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Developed by Magnetic Fields and published by Gremlin Graphics in 1991
Here we have one of the best 2d racing games of it's generation. That's probably a very subjective opening statement, but there's no denying that it was a superb game and the magazine review scores proved it. Even though it was ported to other platforms the Amiga was definitely the best.
I never liked the circuit-based racing from the first game and Lostus III was alright, but this is best of the series in my opinion.
Lotus 2 is pure point-to-point racing against the clock with the goal to make each checkpoint before the timer runs out. Naturally, other cars and obstacles make your task even more difficult, particularly since the other cars drift back and forth across the road just to make overtaking a pain.
Each stage alternates between driving the newly added Lotus Elan and the Lotus Esprit Turbo. The only appreciable difference is the car graphics and the fact that the Elan is slower, although the Elan stages tend to be harder due to much narrower roads.
On the subject of difficulty, this is absolutely hard as nails...made of diamonds...from Newcastle!! I only ever played this with a trainer enabled to give infinite time back on my real Amiga and I never appreciated just how tight the time limit on each level is; you really cannot afford to mess up. The marsh level deserves special mention since green orbs that grant extra time suddenly start appearing and you simply must pick them up to stand a chance of beating the level.
Shaun Southern coded this little beauty and the game engine is very fast and the graphics by Andrew Morris look great. The sheer insanity of the storm level turbo pick-up boggles the mind.
Of course, one cannot play Lotus without mentioning THAT title music...it still sounds amazing, even today! The main title credits the music to Imaginitec Design, but Lemonamiga.com credits Barry Leitch for the music; this wouldn't be surprising considering he did a lot of work for Gremlin.
This wouldn't be a description without a quick moan about certain aspects of the game. I've already mentioned the extremely tight time limits and the car handling is a tad sluggish, which makes quick cornering very hard on some of the faster courses; the storm course will punish you with failure if you collide with any scenery or fail to collect all of the turbos.
And yes, I did manage to drive under one of the lorries on the motorway stage...
This is a real Amiga classic.
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8 сен 2024