Reviews

Charming conversion that captures the essence of the coin op well enough to pass muster and delivers a great slidy drivy experience on the humble ZX.
Its quite a joyous game, relaxing to play with the focus on fun.

Power Drift's not bad it just drifts the wrong side of boring for me. And the least said about the collision detection the better!

Power Drift is another arcade favourite of mine, and so when I saw the Spectrum version in the shops it was an instant buy.

The game begins with great title music which also plays during some races, followed by selecting one of twelve drivers and a course to race on, each consisting of five races in which you must finish 3rd or better to qualify.

The game plays pretty smoothly though slower than the arcade version, which is understandable. It also has a nice looking interface at the top of the screen, showing the character potraits and where they are placed. This is just like the arcade game only much larger.

The graphics in the playing area are nice enough with good detail on the vehicles and tracks, but not only are they monochrome they change colour during the race, which I always found confusing and offputting. The controls work well but steering your car at times can be problematic which causes your car to crash. And at times the collision detection is off, there are times you go wheel to wheel with another driver and pass through, while there are times you crash into them despite not touching them.

Power Drift isn't perfect and better conversions are available on other platforms, but compared to other racing games on the Spectrum it holds out as a quality game.

While not the best port it still holds itself well as a quality racing game, especially when compared with other racing games. I usually felt feeling disappointed with Activision's later titles in comparison to their earlier games, but this was a refreshing change to that theory.

Always did like this in the arcade, but truth be told the Spectrum version isn't the best conversion. The scrolling gravel tracks can be hard on the eyes, especially when it changes colour mid race. And getting close to the other vehicles was unpredictable, sometimes you'll be fine and sometimes it'll register a crash for no apparent reason even though you weren't touching them. Also, the game doesn't seem to want to make up its mind whether to play music during the race or not and it appears to happen randomly. It's quite good fun, but it's not without its flaws.

Not the finest conversion, there are better arcade conversions on the ZX Spectrum and there are better conversions of this game elsewhere. Saying that it's memorable and good fun nevertheless.

1989 Activision Inc (UK)
by John Mullins, Clive Paul, Mr Pixels and David Lowe

Power Drift is a racing game converted from a great arcade coin-op. It's a good fun game, but there are so many things that could have been enhance that I can hardly give it a 4 star review. For instance, the animation, why dont the wheels move? Is it so hard to make wheel animation? The choice of graphics for areas of the road, the gravel for instance is really bad, a mess really. The overall graphic presentation is not the best by any means, with easy to fix things, that were left out because of either laziness or lack of time, I'll give 'em that. Sound in the other hand is really nice, at least I think so. The play ability is enough to keep the player engaged, but a few things again were left neglected, which could have made the difference. Overall there are better arcade conversions for the ZX Spectrum.