In 1990, SEGA developed a DOS conversion of a racing game called Power Drift. One year earlier, this game had been released on arcade machines and many home platforms, ranging from the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 to the Amiga and Atari ST.
Your vehicle in this game is a sand buggy, and I have to admit it is a really fast one. It has quite good acceleration and a top speed close to 250 km/h. Steering the buggy can be tricky, but this depends on the difficulty level. On Easy, there are only a few turns that require you to slow down to stay on track, but if you increase the difficulty, you will have to be really careful not to bump into signs, trees, or anything else near the road.
Your job is to finish in the top three on each of the five available tracks. If you manage to win the game, you'll get a bonus round with a little surprise. (Hint: Look closely at the screenshots.)
The first thing you'll notice when starting the game is that you can choose not only the track on which you will start the championship, but also the face of your driver. Choosing a face doesn't change anything in the game, since everyone drives exactly the same buggy, so it's purely a cosmetic decision. The drivers' faces are shown for the entire duration of the gameplay, and you can see who is currently leading, as the top three have numbers beneath their heads.
I do not know why, but in the DOS version, this face feature is limited. I used to play this game a lot on my Commodore 64 and on my friend's Amiga, and the face of your driver was shown when the car spun after a crash. Also, every time you gained a better position during the race, the driver smiled at you. In this version, every opponent looks the same, and my player also looked the same, even though I had chosen a long-haired girl.
The graphics are pretty decent and colorful. The road not only curves, but also sometimes gets pretty steep, and it might be hard to see what is coming because you'll be driving up or down an incline. I haven't noticed any differences in either the driving speed or the steering during changes in the road's terrain, so it must be just for looks. On one track there is a gap in the road, so your buggy will have to make a stunt jump! The music can get boring after a few races, and there is also a digitized speech before and after each race.
Apart from some graphical additions, the game gives nothing to the genre, and in my opinion it was more fun on a different platform. I give this game a score of 3/5, as it didn't add anything new to the standard style of racing game popular at the time, and the graphics are of low quality in comparison with the ports to other platforms.
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