Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    How does this compare to the original Test Drive. I was somewhat
    disappointed with the original because 1) screen updates were too
    slow. 2) Scenery was boring 3) Game play was boring after the first
    few times.
    
    I have been waiting for a "knock your socks off" driving game for
    the Amiga ever since I got it. There have been 2 flight simulators
    that I would put in this category, but no driving simulators yet.
    Maybe Test Drive II is it?!?
    
    Any comments?
    
    Chris

    
    Well, I never had the original, so I don't really know... Sorry.
    I like it though, as far as screen refresh, well its not slow. I
    think its darn . You could wind up popping in your car disk and
    scenery disk a lot, but they provided a work around for this. You
    can take your favorite scenes and install them oa new master disk,
    this will have you effectivly using 1 disk for your most favor.
    You could create a different master with each scence and thereby
    alwaydrive on your favorite roads. This game is fun and certainly
    would not call it boring, its challenging, I have a hard time competing
    in rookie mode as it is... My wife would say thats because I'm a
    lousy driver!!! Go see it at your local dealer and test drive it,
    I think you will enjoy it. The scenery is good and the movement
    is pretty true, better than some of the others I've seen for sure.
    
    

    
    The program disk comes with the Porsche 959 and the Ferrari F40.
    You can choose to drive either of them and choose an opponent if
    you would like one, otherwise you race against the clock.  You
    can also set the difficulty level and have your perform automatic
    shifts for you in the lesser diffuculty settings.  If you would
    like more variety, there is a scenery disk and a car disk available,
    but is not included with the program.  The car disk includes the
    Corvette ZR1 (King of the Hill Vette), Lotus Esprit Turbo, Ruf Porsche,
    Ferrari Testarossa, and I believe the Lamborghini Countach.
    
    The scenery that comes with the program disk is much better than
    the original.  The cars that you pass or pass on the other side
    of the road appear to be a Mercedes (red) and a Thunderbird (blue),
    and some kind of van.  When you accidently crash into them, they
    have a look of surprise on their faces.  You are also able to crash
    into a cactus on the side of the road or the Police car or even
    the Police officer himself, but such blatant disregard for the law
    will automatically end when the officer's life ends.  If you drive
    off the edge of the mountain side then you will get a sensation
    of falling then the car will crash on the ground.  Whenever you
    crash, you will be able to see the hood of car crunch in a little.
    The opposing vehicle will also crash, so look out when you're chasing
    him because he could have just slammed on his brakes or just had
    an accident and you could rear end him.
    
    I haven't played the original version too much lately, but Test
    Drive II seems to have good acceleration.  When you step on the
    gas it responds like I would expect it to.  Other people that I
    have talked to have said that it handles much more realistically
    than the original, but I haven't compared it myself yet.  This game
    appears to have much more detail as well than the original version.
    For instance, when you pass by a mountain wall, it has better coloring
    and spray paintings on its side, then you will enter a tunnel of
    varying lengths.  If you look on the very top of the screen, you
    will see a dot for yourself, one for an opponent, and one for a
    police car if he is chasing someone (it is not always you, he could
    be chasing the other car).
    
    While you are driving, you can pass by a police car on the side
    of the road.  He usually has a another car already pulled over 
    (typically the Thunderbird).  Sometimes, the police officer is
    standing on the side of the raod and points at you to pull over.
    If you don't he gets in his car and chases you.  The sirens sound
    better than I remember in the original Test Drive.  If you aren't
    going fast enough then he will pull in front of you and force you
    over to side of the road.  You will then be issued a speeding ticket
    which will give you the speed you were clocked at.
    
    When you are approaching the end of a section, you will start to
    see signs for a gas station.  In the upper right of the screen you
    will see how much further the end of the section is and how much
    time is left.  You will not automatically be brought into the gas
    station, you have to stop the car in front of the gas station. 
    If you pass by the station, you will run out of gas and be penalized.
    The penalty for crashing, running out of gas, or getting a ticket
    is to have 20 seconds added to your time for the pass.  At the end
    of each section, the game will tell you how many crashes occurred
    and how many lives you have left.  Then it will give you a stats
    screen to let you know how well you did and also your opponent if
    there was one.
    
    If you do decide to get scenery or car disks, then you can create
    your own scenarios and put them on play disks.  In other words,
    you can choose certain cars and scenery and put them together on
    a disk so you won't have to keep scrolling through the cars or scenery
    to get what you like.  I haven't tested any of the cars on the car
    disk, so I do not know how they perform or if they feel realistic.
    The Porsche 959 is very quick revving and comes alive over 5000
    rpms and has very good off the line acceleration.  The Ferrari F40
    is slower off the line, but very fast once it gets moving, and it
    seems to be stronger at low rpms.
    
    I think its a very good simulation, and I hope that they eventually
    come out with more car disks for such vehicles as the Corvette Z51,
    Porsche 911, Porsche 928S 4, Camaro IROC-Z, Mustang GT, Fiero GT,
    maybe even the new Turbo Trans Am or the Grand National (GNX?).
    It would be interesting to test more common cars such as these.
    
    I hope everyone who buys Test Drive II will enjoy it.
    
    - Jeff C.
    

    I bought Test Drive as one of the first games I had on the Amiga. I too
    found it became boring very rapidly.
    
    My 4 year old daughter likes it though (however she makes me drive the
    cars).
    
    Mike

    How do you switch to the ferrari??? It is always the other car.
    
    Is it true that with the scenery disk you can make your own track???
    
    Which is a better deal, the scenery disk or the car disk?
    
    matt
    

    Hi folks,
    
    Has anyone tried installing duel on any hard drives?  I've installed it
    along with the CARS and SCENERY disks but my sons have been able get
    the following message after beating the high score at the first level.
    "ERROR VALIDATING DISK DH0: KEY 15833- bad block type"
    I used diskdoctor to clean it up.  Diskdoctor came back and told me
    that it had found a file in SCEN that was unreadable and deleted the
    file.  I did a directory of the diskette and the scen directory on the
    hard drive.  No file had been deleted.  Thinking maybe it was because
    of the partition I deinstalled from DH0: and reinstalled on DH2:. Same
    problem occurred.  I then called accolade hot line.  This was the first
    call that they had received from anyone using a hard drive.  Has
    anyone else had any problems?
    
     

       Has anyone encountered a problem with losing sound while running
       Test Drive II.
       
       I'll be driving along and all of sudden the sound of the engine
       dies (crashes and sirens as well).  If I turn the volume up to
       max, I can hear a very faint 'crackling' noise in the speaker as I
       accelerate or change gears.  I get the same thing if I'm running
       my audio through the monitor or my stereo.  I thought this may be
       a hardware problem at first until I let the game run its course.
       As soon as the GAME OVER banner appears and the main musical score
       starts, the sound comes back on.
       
       For your information, I turn off (actually I don't load them when
       I play this game) all background programs (SDUDCLOCK, MACH25, and
       the like) that would interfere with the audio.
       
       ?????
       
       Art
       

    
    Hey! Guess what I found last night?  Yup, the Muscle cars disk.  Pretty
    cool too, although not as fast as the sports cars.  It's fun 'driving'
    a car with a great big wooden steering wheel at 130mph.
    
    I got mine for $16 at the wiz in Westboro.  I hadn't seen it before
    this.
    
    Steve
    
    

	Can anyone tell me if this game is harddisk installable.  I wouldn't
	mind buying it now that you get the entire "Collection" quite
	cheaply, but I have a bit of a policy about only buying things I
	can put on my harddisk.... all this floppy stuff is too tedious.

	P.S.  Mr. Moderator: where should we be entering our notes these
	days... amiga or amiga_v1? .... I wasn't sure so I did both, feel
	free to delete one.

    Wow!  I just came over here to enter my note in amiga_v1 and it was
    already there!

    
    re:.-1
    
    	Test Drive II "The Duel" is hard drive instalable, BUT, it requires
    that the the floppy is in DF0:.  Starting the program from the hard
    drive results in the program checking DF0: for the offical "key"
    disk.  If it finds it, it proceeds from the hard drive. 
    
    	Gary

    Thanks.  I'm not sure if this fits within my policy of "no floppies"
    but it's certainly a lot better than having to wait for it to load of
    floppy.