Voltage

Futuristic racing - perfected by F-Zero nearly twenty years ago, dragged through the mud by Fatal Inertia last year, and now it's back for another stab at greatness. Here's a tip - keep your hopes subterraneously low.

Visually, Voltage certainly seems to be, erm, reminiscent enough of F-Zero to give us hope of a perfectly entertaining doppelganger racer, and there's the odd gameplay detail that suggests it could be a fun little romp in its own right. However, call us prejudiced fools but the fact that this is the first game from a corporate IT company who proudly summarize their debut as "a 3D game", as if that in itself is a selling point suggests that the ghost of low-scoring pile-up Fatal Inertia may return to haunt us.

In fact, the game features sound almost identical to Fatal Inertia's. The year is 3005. There's futuristic-style racing on each planet in our solar system. Bonuses include tachyon fuel and nuclear engines and teleports and... well, you know the rest.