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Title Super Skidmarks
Game Type Driving
Players 1-8 (on AGA)
Compatibility All
HD Installable Yes (See below)
Submission Jason Compton

This Amiga Report review appears here by courtesy of Jason Compton

Review
The premise of Skidmarks and its successor is simple enough. It almost
seems as though the developers, Acid Software, brainstormed and came up
with "Hey, what about a racing game where you leave marks on the track?"

Thus was a legend born. Super Skidmarks is the sequel to the game that
dared ask that question. It sports AGA and ECS compatibility (which
dictates the prettiness of the game: AGA players can race up to 8 cars
while ECS users are limited to 4. (Cut those in half if you want to haul
trailers on the cars you race, which is neat but somewhat silly.)

The race takes place on a large, multi-screen track, although link options
and AGA's ability to display a high-res screen cuts down on the amount of
scrolling necessary. With link options and split screening, you can get a
considerable number of friends in the game.

Lots of cars and lots of tracks are the order - two disks of cars (and you
can roll your own with Imagine) and 4 disks of tracks. Unfortunately, you
can't install the game to HD, as Acid claims it would encourage piracy.
There was supposed to be a special installer coming, but it hasn't surfaced
yet. Dual floppy drives are nice, but not necessary to play the game.

The racing feels fast and smooth in Tournament mode (where you have a
limited number of "replays", which you lose if you fail to finish first in
a race), but it is sluggish in the regular race mode, presumably as a
training level for the tournaments. Having this more flexible would have
been appreciated, however. One complaint is that the Skidmarks racing
model prevents you from going outside of the boundaries of the track,
whether or not you're in the air. This makes for some irritating "bounces"
off of the track, making for a ridiculous concept when you fly through the
air and your forward motion stops dead. It's all part of the game, but not
a very "friendly" part.

The computer players provide a challenge at first but after a few hours of
racing should no longer be a serious enough threat to totally knock you out
of competitions. Super Skidmarks has flexible serial link options (no TCP
networking, though) so playing with friends is encouraged on several
levels.

Complaints? Well, the wheels on the cars don't turn. Detail counts for a
lot, and Super Skidmarks does a good job of keeping it up graphically, but
the static car images are a minus. Actually, the whole "disregard for
physics" is a bit of a problem (sideswipe collisions actually increase the
speed of both cars, which most physics students would have a problem with),
but it IS a game, after all. I also found the game somewhat unstable on an
A3000, with crashes during disk loading. This didn't show up on an A4000,
however.

Super Skidmarks is an extremely playable game for an individual, but is
better suited to a party or friends environment. It's not realistic, but
it's a lot of fun.

Super Skidmarks Review Correction

I should clarify. There IS a hard-drive installer, but it's not shipped
with the software.