The animated flags, the overhangs and the cheeky hint to the games programmers, the Darling brothers, make it feel faster than it is. As said before, the movement is not all that fast for a 2D racer, but things around the environment help. It’s all arranged well, the horizon level is not set to low so there loads of space to see ahead and plan your next move. The race time, speed, gears and so on are displayed along the top and don’t interfere with the primary view, and stand out for easy reading during play. This novelty soon wears off though, but never becomes tiresome. The spectacular car flipping crash sequence is very well animated and hilarious at first. The main sprite of your car is particularly detailed. Getting into the game more, the thing that catches the eye on the main game screen is the graphics. Power Drift springs instantly to mind, but it does improve somewhat as you shift through the gears. This is also the first time you get to feel the speed of it, not all that impressive to be honest, but I have played far worse. The qualifiers are held in bright daylight, it’s not until the actual race where dusk falls and darkness descends, so it really feels like a warm up to the proceedings. This basically serves as a practice run and it largely irrelevant to the actual race, unless to crash out of course. OK, so you’re gearing yourself up for 24 hours (just over an hour) of non-stop racing right? Well not just yet, you have to do the qualifying run first. The leaderboard screen seems to have an interesting 8-bit rendition of Duran Duran’s ‘A View to a Kill’, but that’s probably just my eighties-poisoned ears hearing things. All the menu screens follow the same trend and are superbly presented, all with their own different BGM, that’s surprisingly that not annoying. Things are straightforward in the options department too clearly presented and easy to set in seconds. The animation on the flames is a small example of the GX4000’s improved sprites over the CPC and really sets the tone. As far as title screens go, it’s not fireworks in the sky, but it’s quite impressive none the less. Blazing tyres scream across the screen, spelling out the title of the game in the flames upheld by a jolly energising tune. Broken down, Burnin’ Rubber is a basic game, but games with simple fundamentals can make for a very enjoyable time and it’s all rather exciting from the moment you switch on. There are mountains in the far background, and as you race the sun sets, it gets dark and dawn breaks as the simulation of 24 hours comes to fruition. You drive a classic racing Porsche viewed from the third person behind and race on a long track, aiming to complete the whole race within the time limits of each stage. First, I’ll get the similarities out of the way. Given a quick glance, the 8-bit gamer would instantly think it was WEC LeMans, but on closer inspection, there are subtle differences. Looking to contend with the NES or SMS, Burnin’ Rubber takes a rather good stab at it, but it’s far from a perfect. Produced by Ocean, who released the bulk of GX4000 games, it does a pretty good job at showing some of the improvements over the CPC’s capabilities. Not connected with the 2007 PC title of the same name, Burnin’ Rubber uses this classic as a base and was the first game to be written for the GX4000. Based on the endurance race of the same name, this was the first game to depict 24 hours of racing continuously. One of the popular CPC titles was Konami’s 1988 port of WEC LeMans. 8-bit classics like Buggy Boy and Grand Prix Circuit showed that a racing game can be done well on the home platform. Before the coming of the likes of Daytona USA or the groundbreaking Virtua Racing, POV racing games of the late eighties were still stuck firmly in the 2D world.
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