Lotus Turbo Challenge 2

The sun sets over the highway, rain comes down, fog rolls in, and suddenly you're racing through the night in a tunnel lit only by headlights - Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 puts you behind the wheel of a Lotus sports car and forces you to complete a series of tracks before the merciless time limit runs out. On the Amiga, this racing game was among the absolute top of the genre.

The game was created by the British studio Magnetic Fields and published by Gremlin Graphics in 1991 as a sequel to the successful first installment. Compared to its predecessor, the second game brought a fundamental change: unlike circuits, these are point-to-point races where you drive through diverse environments - desert, snow, fog, rain, and night sections - and each stage has its own character and pitfalls.

At the core of the experience is the sense of speed and smoothness. The game ran briskly, the tracks flew by at a convincing pace, and the changing weather and time of day gave each section a different mood and difficulty. The key was to weave between the other cars and dodge obstacles at full speed, because every collision meant losing precious seconds.

The crown jewel, however, was the split-screen for two players. Lotus 2 was among the titles thanks to which the Amiga earned its reputation as a great machine for two-player gaming - watching your buddy in the bottom half of the screen trying to overtake was one of the best shared experiences of that time. Added to this was the period music by Barry Leitch, which stuck in players' memories.

The Lotus series became one of the icons of arcade racing on the Amiga, and the second installment is often cited as its peak. Together with titles like Stunt Car Racer or the later Lotus 3, it shaped the idea of what a fast and fun racing game on a 16-bit home computer should look like.

Why play: Brisk arcade racing with changing environments and weather, whose two-player split-screen still ranks among the best the Amiga offered in the genre.