Top Gear 2 (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by Lemon Amiga.com
47Top Gear 2 is a smooth driving game which was released in 1994 on the Amiga, and published by Gremlin Interactive. The game features tons of tracks, and a career mode, so maybe this will challenge Lotus for the crown? Lets boot this game up and find out.
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Production Notes:
Captured: 7th November 2021
Narrated: 6th August 2022
I'm not sure if I ever played this game before, but if I did, it must have been for only 5mins. When I tried to play it for the review, the game crashed at the end, and I was playing the WHDLoad version, so maybe there are some bugs in there. I thought this game might be on the hard side, like it is with Prime Mover, so I set the difficulty to Easy. This made the game super easy, and by about 20mins in I was already becoming bored because of this. To the point where I was only half consentrating towards the end, and played the game almost like I was sleepwalking. (Yes, maybe I should have reviewed Sleepwalker!).
The narration was (as usual) made up on the spot, although just before I started the narration I thought about how fun it would be to talk comprehensively about the Lotus games throughout the whole review, and at the very end deliver the scores and only mention Top Gear 2 in passing. But I could not be so cruel to this game, and I only fell back to talking about Lotus for the second half. There is very little to say about the game, and it was difficult to give this a full review, even though I edited most of the footage down to the bare minimum for the later tracks.
The Audio balancing was difficult because the main title theme and menu music was loud, but the in-game music was quiet. I tried to edit some of the menu music so that it sounded quieter, so that I could match the volume for the video, but as the menu music came on every few minutes due to the editing and I gave up. This means the narration seems fairly quiet and in the background of this one, simply because the between-race menu music is so loud. I don't know if this was an issue with the game or with the emulator.
This video is also not monetised because it contains a few seconds of the title theme by Patrick Phelan. I don't like it when all the ad revenue (insignificant as it is) goes to some random guy's account just because I used a tiny bit of their music. Those artists didn't go through the process of putting the review together, so it's not fair that I cant monetise the final production. I was even thinking about replacing the title music with the Lotus 2 theme, but then this would not be fair to those wanting to see and play the game.
Danscore:
The Amiga has had it's share of arcade driving and racing games over it's 9 year life span. Most of those before 1989 were horrendous, and many of them after 1990 were Lotus clones. This is true of this game; as it is both horrendous AND a Lotus clone. Although it doesn't have loads of signposts and things by the side of the track, no puddles of water on the road or rivers, and no pit stops either - making the fuel gauge redundant. The power ups available from the shop provide nothing in the way of enhanced feeling of grip, car handling or speed, and even with all of the upgrades, the speed feels like normal motorway driving speeds at best. Sound effects are ripped directly off of Lotus, and the soundtrack features 2 (that's right, two!) songs - both of which seem fairly dreamy and not at all Hard Rock or industrial techno to get the blood pumping. In fact, I can only say this game runs smoothly and has above average graphics. If that sounds a little bit boring, it is because this whole format was tired by 1994, and this game adds nothing to the genre. As such, I can only give this game 6 out of 10.