Demand for this gaping hole in the market didn't go unnoticed however, as this summer British gamers are going to be confronted with Sony's bouncy and delightful Rally Cross, the Eutechnyx-produced Total Drivin', and this, V-Rally from Infogrames.

Looking at the lush graphics of the tracks, the powerful four-wheeled beasts on offer and the acrobatics that are possible, it's very likely that you'll want to get right in there and start screaming around a few laps in your whining motorcar. However, as sure as the sun rises in the morning, it is guaranteed that you won't get 50 V-meters down the V-road before you undergo the indignity of your first V-crash. It's that hard.

ARI VATANEN
If fate is on your side you might get off lightly, merely being fish-tailed by the excruciatingly determined computer cars so that your fender is forced into the foliage at the road side and you are no longer a threat.

It is entirely possible though that you could foolishly manage to get up to a higher speed on the first straight, and in attempting to avoid another car or follow a bend you glide the wheels over a grassy knoll, culminating in the kind of major accident that people usually have to be cut out of by a fireman wielding an oxy-acetylene torch.

The immediate difficulty of controlling even the game's most harmless cars has its good and its bad points. On the negative side, new players are obviously going to be put off and those friends that you get round to play the split screen mode will rapidly lose interest when it seems beyond the realms of their physical ability to complete a lap in under an hour.

On the positive side, if you buy the game and put in the time needed to hone your driving skills and reactions to those of a chemically aided navy seal, you'll be doing healthy 90-second laps while navigating the curves and rapidly shifting through the gears with inhuman efficiency.

When you reach this stage you can clearly see that the cars were only so hard to drive because they're hyper-sensitive, which isn't really a bad thing once you're used to it! Setting up your car with the necessary tyres and tuning can be critical too, but the most important factors are concentrating on getting a feel for the game and learning to powerslide your way to victory.

As well as the extensive Arcade and Championship modes, there's an excellent Time Trial mode which gives you a ghost car driving your own previous lap to race against. You can play for as long as you want on a course, and this is really the way to improve quickly.

I GO DRIVING
V-Rally has nearly every feature you desire, with ten real cars, 45 gorgeous courses, endlessly varied driving conditions, link and split screen options that can be combined for four player gaming and every possible mode of play imaginable. This is why its few omissions are more surprising than in a game of lower standard.

It's fair enough that the computer controlled cars are tough to catch once they get away from you, it just means you really have to push yourself to the limit to take first place. But unfortunately there isn't any overhead course display to let you see how near or far the three cars are from you ­ something which nearly every other racing game has. The other missing detail concerns the rev counters in two player mode. There aren't any. A tiny thing like that actually changes the gameplay quite a bit, as it means you are each forced to use automatic gears because the roar of two equally excited engines makes it hard to tell who should be changing up or down.

Still, it's hard to be bitter. With your co-driver shouting the easy rights and the hard lefts like you'd find in a professional rally, you'll find yourself winding through the mountain roads in the Corsica stages, sliding sideways on the pink sands of Indonesia, trudging over the thick snow of the Swedish tracks or throwing the tail out on the gravel and dirt of the typically overcast English courses.