Best features?
Certainly, the visuals are excellent (so too, the animation), although quite a lot of the background scenery is cut out in the multiplayer games to keep the speed up. Near graphical bits include swinging barriers, trains rattling by, waves lapping against shores. The kind of things you saw in Mario Kart three years ago. Nonetheless, it's easily the best fist anyone's made of a clone. The circuits are expansive affairs, ideal for four-player battles. Power-ups proliferate, offering speed boosters and bullets to negate the threat of opponents.

Dual Shock?
Oh, indeed. The Dual Shock works pleasingly well in Speed Freaks. When you whoosh off of a hill and hit the ground, the pad vibrates. The controls are minimal, thankfully. The top shoulder buttons enable you to bounce around the tighter corners, and another acts as the release for power-ups.

Who's developing it?
Funcom, a team of coders based in Dublin. They've been working on the game for two years now, and although quite a number of publishers showed an interest, they opted for the might of SCEE themselves, figuring that Sony would put their full weight behind it. Oh, don't confuse Funcom with Funsoft, either.

Is it a contender?
Speed Freaks is the by far the best attempt yet at producing a Mario clone on PlayStation. It's certainly no more than this though. If you've got an N64, don't bother. The game feels pretty complete, and despite the odd bit of polygon-folding, Speed Freaks looks the business. As a one-player game, though, you'd be better off looking elsewhere.

*Huge, colourful, expansive circuits
*Split-screen, four-player option
*It's like Mario Kart
*Hardly original, but technically fabulous
*Apart from a touch of poly-folding