Whoops, took that corner a tad too early there

No official teams, rainbow-coloured cars, but a storming F1 racer from Ubi Soft.
Martin Kitts

With the recent announcement that Electronic Arts have snapped up the official FIA Formula One licence until some time after Doomsday, you might well think that it's an instant black flag and early retirement for any rival F1 game foolhardy enough to take on the might of the EA marketing juggernaut.

Not so, perhaps, because Ubi Soft's brazenly unofficial Monaco Grand Prix racing simulation plays a solid enough game of catch-the-millionaire to make its lack of genuine drivers and teams seem somewhat less important.

Monaco is actually an N64 sequel to a PC original which appeared last summer to rapturous acclaim from hardcore simulation fans, who adored it for its uncompromising realism. This being a mass-market console version, the simulation aspect has been toned down considerably, leaving a game which, while hardly an arcade-style title, is considerably easier to pick up and play.

Make no mistake, the first time you play Monaco you'll be spinning out on every tight corner and sliding all over the place at the slightest twitch of the finely tuned analogue stick. Encouraging enough for the F1 enthusiast, but luckily (in Easy mode, at least) it's simple enough for the average Mario Kart fan to get to grips with after only a moderate amount of practice. It's more a matter of coping with the intense speed of the game than worrying about gear changes and braking points.