Subject: REVIEW: Jaguar XJ220
From: "Norman St. John Polevaulter" <[email-masked]>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

The best sprite-based racing game I've ever seen.

                 J A G U A R   X J 2 2 0 -- T H E   G A M E
                           From Core Design [UK]

REQUIREMENTS: 1 meg RAM, PAL-capable Amiga. Two disk drives a plus.
COMPATIBILITY:AmigaDOS 2.04 and accelerator-friendly. Takes over machine.
              No HD install.
COPY-PROTECTION: Disk-based and manual, though relatively unobtrusive.

REVIEWED ON: Amiga 3000/25, 4 MB FAST, 2 MB CHIP [brag brag].

Jaguar XJ220 is the latest entry into the crowded Amiga driving game
market. It allows the player to drive the XJ220, the newest Jaguar,
in international competition against a host of other cars. Rumor has
it that Jaguar delayed the release of their limited-edition XJ220 to
coincide with the release of this game!

Anyway, there are 12 countries to race in, each with 3 different tracks,
for a total of 36 different tracks. The tracks sport varying scenery, ranging
from typical country roads to desert, mountain, and marsh courses. There is
a wide variety of weather conditions as well, including rain, winds, snow,
night, fog, sandstorms, and leaves. Finishing in the top ten in a race gives
you prize money which is spent (all too fast... sigh) on repairing damage
done to your Jaguar during the race. After finishing a country's three
tracks, you have to dole out more cash to fly your car and team to another
country for the next race. Countries can be visited in any order, as long
as you have enough money to pay for the trip. The ultimate goal, of course,
is to pile up enough points to win the whole competition! (Admittedly this
is difficult at first, so just lasting through the whole series will do
for a start...)

Most important, of course, is the gameplay. I am pleased to report that
it is excellent. The Jaguar steers quite well with the joystick (mouse
control is also available, though no analog joystick.) Your computer
opponents are not the dumb, predictably perfect, always-finishing-in-the-
same-order opponents seen in other games. They have to drive the course
just like you do. Instead of just robotically following the track, they
brake for curves, try to overtake each other, and dodge back and forth
to block you from passing. This makes competition much more
fun than in other games, needless to say. The tracks are challenging
and won't be mastered in the first sitting.

The graphics are magnificent. The animation of the road and roadside
objects is silky smooth, even at 10 MPH. Objects and backgrounds
are big, detailed, and colorful. The weather conditions are astonishing
in their execution, and it's particularly nice that they vary just like
real weather (ie, on a track with rain, the rain will sometimes taper off
to nothing and at other times pour down literally in sheets, making
visibility quite a challenge.) In fog and at night, objects fade smoothly
into view as they approach. The attention to detail is great -- yes, those
are shooting stars in the night sky...

Sound is quite nice. Before each race, you can change the sound with the
in-car CD player -- six different racing tunes, sound effects, or a funky
"radio" option that plays synthesized music and is absolutely useless
because the radio doesn't play during the race. Other than that, the music is
super and the digitized effects fit in nicely, from the opening shout
of "Start your engines!" to the last sickening crash as your Jaguar piles
into a freeway overpass.

After each race you get to see the final results, and note who your
best competitors are. If you won any money, it's time to spend it
repairing your car. (Hitting objects during the race does not send your
Jag up in a fiery explosion; you merely pull away and continue along.
The damage is kept track of during the race.) After repairs, it's off
to the next race or the next country, via the very slickly-done world
map screen. You also have the opportunity to save the game after every
track.

There are a couple of extras in Jaguar XJ220 -- a two-player mode, and
a map editor. The two-player mode splits the screen into top and bottom,
and both players race simultaneously. The speed (on my machine, anyway)
is just as good as in one-player mode, and competing against a human is
lots of fun. Both players pool their money for repairs and airfare, which
makes sense if you think about it -- there'd be little point in continuing
a two-player game if one person dropped out. What would have made this
perfect would (of course) have been a modem play option! Ah well.

The map editor is fairly basic, but I won't complain -- it does the job,
and it promises to give the game a little more life. You select a country
and one of its tracks, and from there can adjust the course and scenery
to your heart's desire, making it as twisty or as straight as you please.
You cannot, however, change the fundamental characteristics of a course:
the background landscape is fixed, the weather condition (rain, fog,
whatever) is fixed, the number of laps is fixed, and the selection of
scenery props is limited to what was put on the original track by the
programmers. You can't, for example, take a waterfall or cliffside
from a Swiss track and put it on an English track. I would have liked
to see a little more flexibility here.

The presentation of the program is very slick, with different music
for every part of the game. Customizability is emphasized -- you can
adjust control sensitivity, manual or automatic steering, fire button
or joystick up to accelerate (using the fire button to accelerate gives
you the ability to simulate the dubious real-life maneuver of stomping
on the gas and the brake at the same time) and so forth. There is
disk access between the sections, but it isn't TOO annoying.

Now the compatibility gripes: 1. The version I played was the PAL version
(of course) and it uses the whole PAL screen. However, it does not
automatically flip the computer into PAL mode. Come on, guys, you KNOW this!

2. This will only apply to A3000's which boot Kickstart from the hard
drive. If you stick the Jaguar Disk 1 into the machine and switch on,
Jaguar XJ220 takes control before the computer has a chance to load
Kickstart, and then trips and falls on its face. I solve problems 1 and 2
by booting the machine normally, and then rebooting in PAL mode with
the Jaguar Disk 1 in the drive. Works fine (the program itself has no
problem with Kickstart 2.04 or an accelerator. In fact, it's probably
taking advantage of the '030.) This doesn't really annoy me, though
your mileage may vary.

[Could anyone tell us how this performs on a stock 68000 system? - JLT3]

3. I was very disappointed to find out it wasn't HD installable, though
I wasn't really expecting otherwise. HD installability would speed the
in-between segment disk access considerably and make loading and saving
games and custom tracks a lot less tedious.

* NOW, THE REAL QUESTION: HOW DOES XJ220 STAND UP AGAINST LOTUS TURBO II...?

Er... well... *blush* I have no idea. I've never played Lotus Turbo II.
But I have played quite a lot of other racing games, and XJ220 knocks
the sprite-based ones into a cocked hat. Lotus Turbo II would have to be
one hell of a game to beat XJ220!

The Final Verdict: XJ220 is a smashingly super game and I'd say it's a
must-have for racing game fans. Just like Microprose F1GP rose to the
undisputed top among vector-based racing games, Jaguar XJ220 is
poised to grab the top position among sprite-based games. Get it.

[Your blood pressure just went up.]       Mark Sachs IS: [email-masked]
DISCLAIMER: Penn State only cares about things that are green and fold easily.
                               "Don't panic!"
   "I'm not panicking. I'm watching you panic. It's much more entertaining."