Multi-Player Games on the ST

Two of the best car racing games on the ST.

Vroom 3 is easily one of the most impressive racing game on the ST with its fully sampled sound and breathtaking speed. Based on the grand prix you and your friend race it out over 6 courses to try and take as many points from each race as possible. The gameplay is quite simply superb and once you are familiar to the mouse control you will have no trouble in hitting someone's tires to be catapulted in the air, fly over five cars, and into the lead. Great Stuff.

The Lotus Trilogy sits you in a variety of Lotus cars racing towards checkpoints (like Out Run) or round a circuit. The main attraction of Lotus is apart from the fast and flowing gameplay, the great variety of the courses and the ability to design your own with Lotus 3. Graphics in all three games (especially Lotus 3) are very good but the sound of the cars is basically a whining noise on top of above average chip-music. Excellent games though.

Looking at another perspective, the king of the overhead racing games has to be the glorious Supercars 2. Get your mate and race over 20 levels of missile and mine filled mayhem. Smooth scrolling coupled with flawless gameplay makes for plenty of arguments. Watch in delight as you look in the other screen partition to see your opponent get hit by your homing missile and be relegated to last position. Other brilliant games worthy of a mention include IndyCar and Super Off Road.

PD Alternatives: Hot Wheels, Cops & Robbers 2

Dyna Blaster (BomberMan)

If you've always wanted to charge around blowing your mates up, this is the ideal game for you. Up to five players can take part thanks to the adapter that plugs into you ST's parallel port.

The object is easy. Simply leave a bomb somewhere on the level and hope that one of the other players are caught by the explosion. There are various power-ups to be had. From extending the blast range on your bombs to enabling you to lay up to 8 bombs at once! The last surviving player wins. Superb playability coupled with absolutely manic gameplay makes this an essential part of your multi-player collection. It's also furiously addictive!

PD Alternatives: DynaBusters +, Bomb And Blast Man.

Sensible Soccer V1.2 ( International Sensible Soccer )

Despite the inevitable comparisons with Kick Off 2 and Team, Sensible Soccer remains the best football sim you can get for your ST. The graphics are small but well defined and immensely playable, the only niggle is the slightly tricky control system, but with some practice you soon get used to it. The multi-player mode enables you to create a whole plethora of weird and wonderful footy leagues and gives you that wonderful gloaty feeling associated with slaughtering part time teams 10-0. Up to 64 players can participate in a cup competition and up to 20 in a league system and you can even create your own custom events. Invite a few pals over and have a great time listening to all the bad excuses for why they have just been beat 4-0. Brilliant.

Lemmings

The world's most famous cutesy puzzle-'em-up, Lemmings, also has a wicked two player option. You get a split screen view of the same level, but with two exits. The aim is to guide your lemmings to your exit, while being as obstructive as possible to your opponent's - you get a real kick out of watching his lemmings plummet to their deaths while yours scamper home. While you gloat over your opponents failure, however, you fail to realize he is doing the same thing to you - things can suddenly turn very nasty. Although you can use a combination of control methods, using two mice is the best - and most frantic - option. There is not a huge amount of two-player levels but it will definitely keep you and a friend occupied for ages. Smashing game.