Game Review: Kikstart II (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic)

Presentation

There is no loading screen but once the game has fully loaded, you do get to see what looks like a loading screen.  This made me wonder why that didn’t get displayed during the loading process and just seemed counterintuitive and the wrong way around.  After all, what could have been displayed on the screen for a couple of minutes (and looked reasonably good), just appears and disappears after a few brief moments.  After each game has finished though, it does re-appear again, so that’s probably the reason why.

This main menu has a jerky scrolling message with changing colours of the programmer and graphic artist names.  At the bottom of the screen are icons you can choose and by pressing the enter key, you can type in your name.

Stay Calm and Control Yourself!

As you’d expect, Kikstart II is about getting to the finishing line quicker that opponent does.  No surprise there, but it really isn’t as simple as that to play as this game is extremely unforgiving.  Your speed is shown in the top-left hand corner in a red rectangle and tapping accelerate or decelerate will move one notch (or dot) to the left or right.  It isn’t just a matter of accelerating flat out (which would be fun), but rather more a game of disciplined skill.

You must not exceed the speed limit for the obstacle that you are ride over going too fast or you’ll go a cropper over the handlebars.  It’s absolutely guaranteed that you’ll tumble of your bike plenty of times, resulting in you flipping and rotating of your bike and landing flat on the ground.  Ouch!

This, however, is nowhere near as painful as the extremely long delay that often happen when you crash (all too frequently).  Until the screens scrolls to a flat position (which can take many seconds before you can resume riding again), you need the patience of a saint.  In fact, it can be so bad at times that it feels like you are watching the game rather than taking part, making it quite boring until you can restart riding again.

Playability

There are four controls which are accelerate, decelerate, wheelie and jump with each one being quite responsive.

Provided you do manage to stay on your bike long enough and accelerate, your segment of the screen does scroll at a reasonable rate.  When you do crash though, it can be another story altogether (as mentioned above).

Graphics

You can tell that attention to details has gone into these and of particular note, are the flame-throwers, dirt ramps and telephone boxes.  The tyres, hills, gates, barrels and brick work all look detailed too.

The springs are well animated and performing a fast jump and wheelie on these does look and feel rather good, adding some excitement.

There is some colour clash when moving through a couple of areas of the screen.  Moving through the flame throwing sections (even if there is no flame) and going through the telephone boxes makes your bike go red.  Also, when you do a high jump, you move into the speed area of the screen display, resulting in your bike changing colour for a second or too.  I was happy to accept that though as it gives you more area to make higher jumps.

Silence Isn’t Always Golden

Now, when I think of scrambling motorbikes, I think of loud revving noises and lawnmowers!  Well, Kikstart II couldn’t be further away from that in the sound department.  Had my ZX Spectrum beeper failed or gone faulty?  Well, no it hadn’t.  There just isn’t any sound whatsoever and it’s a silent as a ZX81.  So sonically, it’s a non-starter.

Amusingly though, music must have been in the mind of the programmer.  As in the bottom right-hand corner are the names of the two players.  They default as player being 1: GARY and 2: COMPUTER.  However, when you go to change player 2’s name, it changes to NUMAN.  As first I thought it was a typo of the word Human and then realised it was, obviously meant to read as Gary Numan!

Oddly, the inlay card instructions state that you can press Q to turn of the music during the game.  As there is no sound, this must be a printing error which they omitted to take out and could well be for another computer.  I did try pressing other keys but none of them produced a tune or sound effects.  Just to also note pressing Q key is used to perform a wheelie.

The Course Designer

What Kikstart II does have is a user-friendly course designer.  Any levels you create can be saved and re-loaded which gives a bit more longevity to the game.  Even if you aren’t too bothered about it, no doubt you’d want to give it a go at least a few times, just to try and experiment with it.

The keys in the designer are shown at the bottom above the main icons.  For example, pressing 1 moves your white square left and 2 moves it right.

To select the ramps, springs, bumps, flame-throwers, telephone box and other obstacles etc; you just need to go through the menu and press the corresponding key to position it on the course.  To place that part, simply press the space key and the screen scrolls slightly to the right.  The length of these can also be determined, with 1 being short and 4 (usually) being the longest for most.

If you don’t like what you’ve put on the course, you can erase that part and amend it again.  Indeed, you can go back and forth as much as you like as well to look over your creation.  Once I got used to it knowing which letters represented an item, I soon get used to it.  Creating courses just takes just your imagination and how easy or difficult you want the race to be.

Final Thoughts

I recall one of my old school mates telling me just how good Kikstart II was on his C64.  Naturally, I really hoped that the Spectrum version would live up to that reputation too, but alas, on this occasion, it doesn’t even come close.

Having very long delays after crashing and scrolling slowly next flat position, no loading screen and no sound whatsoever, it really does feel like a disappointment.

As you start loading the game, it begins with Program: KIKSTART. Now, to me, that should really have read Program: KIKSTARTII (as the original Kikstart was never on the Spectrum).  Yes, it’s a very small to pick up on, but I notice these kinds of tiny details.

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