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Kikstart II

It's got motorbikes in it!

Not dissimilar to Stuntman in concept, the novel idea of Kikstart II was to complete a motorbike assault course in the quickest possible time - preferably quicker than your opponent.

Presented in a simple side-scrolling split-screen format, the sequel was, once again, released at the bargain price of GBP 1.99, but represented a monumental improvement on the tech demo that was the original Kikstart.

The gameplay might have looked pretty simple, but in reality it was a fiendish game with a challenging learning curve which would bloody the noses of hardcore games today. But once you sussed out the precise demands of each type of scenery, success became a matter of memorising the course layout and being able to adjust your speed at precisely the right time.

Featuring some 26 courses to race over (as opposed to the miserly three in the original), you could choose your courses on a whim and setup a five course challenge with a friend - and played against someone who knew what they were doing it was quickly apparent this was easily one of the most fun multiplayer games ever made for the C64. But such was the game's addictive appeal, that even racing against the AI was fun for a while; until you mastered it, at least.

One of the few games of the era to include its own track editor, really determined souls could even create their own courses, but with 26 included, the game already had more than enough for the asking price.

7 / 10

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