Fatal Racing (PC)

Fatal Racing, or Whiplash as it is known in the US, is a fairly old game now, but it's still great fun to play.

First of all, installing it is pretty easy. It runs in DOS or any Windows (although I haven't tried it on Windows ME, 2000 or XP - but I don't see why it shouldn't work on them too).
With it being quite an old(ish) game, it takes up very little room on todays 40Gb hard drives.

Onto playing the game.
.../> With a name like Fatal Racing, you know there's going to be violence, and there is a bit. You can ram other cars (and they WILL ram you), and so you must pit in to repair damage.
Heavily damaged cars eventually blow up (as long as the race is quite long - which is only in harder difficulty levels).

There are also Serial, Modem and Network multiplayer modes. In Network mode you can play with up to sixteen players.
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Fatal Racing, or Whiplash as it is known in the US, is a fairly old game now, but it's still great fun to play.

First of all, installing it is pretty easy. It runs in DOS or any Windows (although I haven't tried it on Windows ME, 2000 or XP - but I don't see why it shouldn't work on them too).
With it being quite an old(ish) game, it takes up very little room on todays 40Gb hard drives.

Onto playing the game.

If you are terrible at driving games, you still stand a chance, as there are around eight or so difficulty levels.
The easiest level allows you to get used to the controls, but if you've ever played a racing game before, you'll win every race on this level.
The harder levels have a nice learning curve, so however good (or bad) you are at the game, there's a difficulty level for you.

Moving on to the controls, they are very simple. It is an arcade game, not a simulation game, so the only controls you need are accelerate, brake and steering. You can of course change the views, and in one player mode you can even give your teammate orders.

With it being an arcade game, it has a two player mode, which is great fun.
It is a split screen mode, but you can still see everything that's going on, and you get to shout at the person next to you too :)

The graphics are of course quite dated now.
You can switch between VGA graphics (quite blocky) and SVGA (much sharper but only for Pentiums really..).
As for the sound - the voices are great, lots of 'woooahs' and so on, but the music is some sort of elevator tune. Turn it off!!

Last but not least, the other features of the game:

There are sixteen racers in each race (although you can select to have only two or eight in a race).
They each race for one of eight racing 'teams'.
As you select the team and car you want to race for, a voice tells you all about the team.

You can also change the names of all the drivers, which can add a bit of a personal touch to it.

Moving on to the tracks, there are eight (one for each team) when you first start.
But if you win the big competition mode, you unlock another eight tracks.
There are lots of jumps, loops and corkscrews which make for a very interesting race.

With a name like Fatal Racing, you know there's going to be violence, and there is a bit. You can ram other cars (and they WILL ram you), and so you must pit in to repair damage.
Heavily damaged cars eventually blow up (as long as the race is quite long - which is only in harder difficulty levels).

There are also Serial, Modem and Network multiplayer modes. In Network mode you can play with up to sixteen players.

So, to recap:
Low hardware requirements (as it is an old-ish game).
Good array of difficulty levels.
Simple arcade controls.
Fun two player split screen mode.
Dated graphics (but not bad enough to hamper enjoyment).
Eight teams to choose from.
Fifteen other racers on the track.
Loops, jumps and corkscrews.
Cars will ram you, and each other.
Multiplayer modes. 

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