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After the huge success of both Gremlin games Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge and Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, Core Design decided to make an arcade racer of their own which introduced the Jaguar XJ220 as its main star. This £400.000 car can produce a whopping 549BHP which makes it capable of doing 217 mph or 347 km/h with relative ease. That’s some serious business!
When you look Jaguar XJ220 you will see that most of it seems to be a copy of what has been done before. You’ll have to drive your car on different tracks all over the world and compete against other drivers who are driving other super cars like Bugatti’s, Porsche 959’s, Ferrari F40’s and Corvette’s. You can do this in one player or in two player split-screen mode. There’s also a possibility to choose one of many different thumping tracks to listen to while driving by selecting the appropriate track on a CD-player (where have I seen this before?) or you can choose to turn your audio-system off and listen to the howling of your engine. An extra new musical option in Jaguar XJ220 is to turn on the radio. All the musical tracks are of a pretty high quality, setting the mood just right. The sound effects are okay, but they are not the very best.
You will drive against other drivers fighting for points, which will determine your position in a true drivers championship as well as a constructors championship for the different car manufacturers, you driving for Jaguar of coarse. There are many different countries to race in and each country has its own racing conditions, which consist of different surroundings and the possibility of encountering fog, snow, rain, wind or even sandstorms while driving. You will first have to do three races in England after which you can choose to fly to another place on the world map to participate in some challenging races there. A race consists of a number of laps on a track in which you do not only have to deal with the road ahead and your rivals, but you also have to keep an eye on the fuel-gage. If your thirsty car almost emptied its fuel tank you might want to come in for a pits stop to get yourself some gasoline or else you might come to a sudden stand still, causing you to have to walk to the finish line. So far it all sounds familiar, but after this Jaguar XJ220 starts to take its own route.
Your race results not only determine the amount of race-points you earn, but there’s also money to be won! That cash can be used to pay for damage which you sustained during a race. On a separate repair-screen you can look at the car after the race from different angles determining which parts should be replaced. Another thing for which you need money is to travel around the world to other countries and to participate in other races. The farther away your destination, the more $$$ you’ll have to cough up. This strategic element is a nice concept which Core integrated into this game.
And that’s not all. Tired of driving the same tracks over and over? Jaguar XJ220 has the solution for this problem by introducing a complete track-editor into the game. And it’s by no means a bad effort. In fact, the editor is great and very user-friendly! You can change everything from the slopes and corners of a track to the side objects. It even has the option of a balloon in the sky with a customizable text scrolling on it! The only snag is that you can’t make completely new stand alone tracks, but you have to replace the existing tracks in the game. You can save your tracks to a disk, so you can put some rubber on these track surfaces whenever you desire.
The graphics in XJ220 are pretty neat. Especially the menu-graphics and race-statistics are portrayed very stylishly. Still, I feel the in-game graphics could have been a bit better and a tad more detailed. Also the side objects could have been drawn in a view more steps, because they increase in size a bit shocky when you scream past them. The screen update is very fast and everything zooms by very quickly indeed, giving you a good sense of speed.
The handling of your car is just about right as is the competence of your computer rivals, which really seem to be competent drivers. This is something which isn’t the case in many other arcade racers which sometimes tend to make the computer drivers driving chicanes or loose parts of the scenery. This increases the challenge of racing in Jaguar considerably.
All things considered, Jaguar XJ220 is a pretty solid racing game in its own right. But because it is unquestionably inspired so much on the first two Lotus titles, I can’t help to compare Jaguar XJ 220 to the Lotus games. I personally preferred Lotus 1 slightly over the second Lotus mainly because of the racing for position instead of racing against the clock. In that respect I’m happy to see that in Jaguar this form of racing is adopted too. Still, I like the Lotus titles better, because these games just look and feel a bit more solid and polished. I think the graphics are also better and a bit more detailed in the Gremlin efforts as is the game play, although Jaguar has the advantage of a very good track editor. Whichever you think is better, the fact remains that Jaguar XJ220 is a very good racing game which I most certainly recommend to everyone!
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Jaguar XJ220 boosts some really nice graphics, especially the different menu screens are very stylish. The in-game drawing is also good, but it could have been a bit more detailed in my opinion.
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There are quite a lot of different music tracks to listen to in this game and they are all of a pretty high quality. The sound effects are not bad, but certainly not the best.
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Jaguar XJ220 is a fast and highly playable game! The addition of the strategy-element and the inclusion of a superb track editor push the playability to considerable heights. Also the competence of the computer drivers is a positive factor.
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| Off all the arcade racers available on the Amiga, this is one of the best, but in my opinion not the absolute cream of the crop. Although Jaguar XJ220 is heavily inspired by the qualitatively slightly better Lotus games, the addition of a superb track-editor and a strategy element make this game unique in its own right. Highly recommended! |
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