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In my day, BMX bikes were seriously trendy pieces of equipment (despite the fact they were pretty crap and you tended to fall off them a lot). But times change, and nowadays it's mountain bikes that everyone's riding (despite the fact that they cost about the same as a car and if you leave them out for more than 6 seconds they get nicked).
Nevertheless CodeMasters, being the dedicated followers of fashion that they are, have come up with a rather cute Mountain Bike Simulator (just as we're getting in on the action by giving away one in a compo over on page 58). To be brutally honest it doesn't precisely replicate the actual feel of riding a bike over rough terrain, but that would be a tad difficult to do on a Speccy anyway. Instead, what you see is a side view of a small bod on a bike as he rides along. The ground scrolls from right to left and presents you with small bumps, large bumps, ditches to jump and big pools of oil (or acid or something).

Mind the mogul!
You control the speed of the bike (ranging from slow to not quite so slow) and whether you want to jump or wheelie (or combine the two). What you don't control is the time limit, which is tight and brings a welcome feeling of urgency to the proceedings. This gets shorter as you progress up through the six levels, just as the obstacles get steeper and the jumps get longer. (In fact, you'll probably find you need to stay in high gear the whole time, and just hope that you to spot the ditches and ravines in time.)
And guess what? I actually found Mountain Bike Simulator pretty playable. Blimey! What happened was I started to get annoyed because I was so crap at it, so I played it a bit more - and began to quite like it (sort of). It's not amazing or anything, and nothing much ever really happens, but it ain't too bad. The graphics and scrolling are certainly very smooth. Anyway, it'll certainly appeal to most owners of these so called 'mountain' bikes (who can play it after their real bikes have been nicked, hur hur).

Verdict: 67%
Review by James Leach