Legendary Sega designer Yu Suzuki owes his greatest fame to OutRun and Daytona USAbut between the two he made the lesser known Power Drift. He used what was then known as the ‘super scaler’-technology; Power Drift constructed its elevated, rollercoaster-like circuits entirely from two-dimensional parts, but hurled them at your eyeballs so quickly that it seemed as if the entire structure was three-dimensional.
On the first home screen, you not only have to select the circuit of your choice, but also one of the twelve available drivers, who will then immediately be taken into his car – a service that, while we’re on the subject, would be particularly welcome after a somewhat heavy lunch.
Power Drift makes you dizzy
Once you were underway, the car turned out to be just as slippery on the road as the game’s title suggested, and the screen tilted in a terrifying manner to further emphasize each drift. Which is all well and good, until you slide off the top of one of the towering viaducts and the camera crashes behind you in a sickening manner.
If you managed to keep your buggy on the road and complete the first five circuits as a winner, you unlocked a bonus game where you either Super Hang On was allowed to drive, or, how cool, get out of the fighter jet Afterburner could fly. And believe us, once you’ve flown over a few carts in an F-14 Tomcat, the bickering about foul play with the budget cap in Formula 1 comes across as very small beer.
If you were lucky enough to be at an arcade that had the deluxe version of the game, you could clamber into a real cockpit and the seat would throw you in all directions on the undulating and winding tracks. There may not have been an official ‘hard’ mode for this game, but we soon found one: try playing it after consuming an ‘all the trimmings’ hot dog and a pint bottle of Fanta.
