Power Drive: Review

Format: Super Nintendo/Mega Drive/Amiga/Amiga CD32/MS-DOS/Game Gear
Publisher: U.S. Gold
Developer: Rage Software
First release: 1994
Availability: PAL only.
Version reviewed: Super Nintendo.

Title screen

Released in 1994 for both SNES and Mega Drive in PAL form only, Power Drive manages to straddle the line between traditional 16 bit racer, due to its somewhat old hat top-down view, and a very modern experience which is provided by its tricky handling and focus on realism.

PAL Box art

Graphics:

Visually Power Drive continues the old and new theme with detailed but fairly standard looking locations mixed with nicely rendered and animated cars which works very well. The cars have tons of animation frames for smooth rotation and all exhibit shiny patches when the sun reflects off the paintwork, although the paint colours are a little muted.
The environments are nicely varied and offer lots of detail. Trees and rocks little the backgrounds and dust sprays up when drifting into corners. Rain falls on certain levels, albeit in a rather simplistic form and night races come with a cool bouncing headlight effect.
Interestingly certain screens such as the damage repair screen display in the SNESs high resolution interlaced mode and look impressive on a CRT.
It’s a pleasing looking game without ever wowing the player.

Rally Cross in the rain

Sound:

Audio is equally nice but unspectacular. The music is meaty with some funky drumming and techno style tunes and compliments the action well. Cars sound a little weird but inoffensive and the tyre sounds are just right.
Again, the audio does enough.

Choose your, tiny city runner!

How Does It Play?

Initially Power Drive is quite a difficult racer, cars tend to feel like they are dragging exhausts across the surface of the road when changing direction. It feels almost unresponsive in context of other top-down racing games. However this is an off-road racing game and once you adjust to the heavy turning and auto-centring of the wheels, you learn to coax the cars around bends at full speed which is immensely rewarding. Gentle nudges of the d-pad is a useful technique when lining up the car for the next sharp turn. It’s a deep handling model that provides much satisfaction when mastered. Use of the handbrake is recommended for progressive slides around tight turns. J-Turns are also possible and a super cool to master.

Mastery of the courses, aided by useful direction arrows is vital. Power Drive requires all of you concentration to complete, especially in later stages when you obtain faster cars. Each stage provides unique challenges too with wet, night and different surfaces such as snow to race over. Collision physics are also excellent, with cars responding naturally with each other. That said, the damage model in the game means you should keep those collisions to a minimum!

Escort Cosworth Group 1, a monster in the wet.

Content:

The main crux of the game is the career mode that offers various events over eight locations, with passwords for each.  These events are Special Stage, which is a regular rally time trial, Rally Cross, which is a 1v1 race and Skill Test, which are driving school type events that have you reverse parking and negotiating tricky cone sections!
Six cars are on offer over three classes of rally, Group N, Group 2 and Group 1. Each group offers a new level of challenge and you have to balance you race earnings with repair costs and save enough to purchase a new car when they are available.

The career is a balancing act of skill to avoid damage but to drive fast enough to break records and win events to earn cash. You cannot drive too carefully because you will not earn enough money, but drive to recklessly and you will not be able to repair your car!

Power Drive also offers an enjoyable multiplayer mode based on this career. You do not race together but scores are totalled after each event to determine the winner of each location.

Driving school fun!

Mega Drive:

The Mega Drive version is very similar to the SNES game. It has a slightly different look, more gritty in places with extra detail plus it benefits from a few extra track obstacles. The only drawback with this version is that you cannot play music and sound effects together in races.

Gritty Mega Drive version. Looks great.

Summary.

Power Drive is a supremely rewarding racing game. It offers a large single player mode that is very challenging, with good variety of events and locations. The handling whilst initially tricky, rewards patience and skill. It still plays superbly well today and a modern update would be most welcome. There is also a superb sequel on the Atari Jaguar called Power Drive Rally.

High resolution interlaced menus on SNES.

Verdict: Recommended.