Lotus Games Original Versions
The Lotus games are 2D racing games developed by Shaun Southern and Andrew Morris of Magnetic Fields for the Atari ST and Amiga from 1990-1992.
Due to their precise controls, challenging gameplay and smooth sprite-scaling, the Lotus games are some of the best arcade-style racers of the early 90s.
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge Amiga 1990
Magnetic Fields released Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge for ST/Amiga in 1990. The original version of Lotus is famous for its smooth framerates, accurate controls and split-screen 2-player mode.
The original version of Lotus features 32 courses, 20 cars per race and strategic pit stops.
Lotus was distributed on 1x 3.5" 880kB diskette. It was not hard disk drive-installable.
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 Amiga 1991
Magnetic Fields subsequently released Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 for ST/Amiga in 1991; it was also coded by Shaun Southern. And Lotus 2 was also excellent. Lotus 2 featured full-screen single-player mode (not split-screen single-player mode), 4-player computer-link, weather conditions, night-driving, road hazards, jumps, better graphics and a more professional presentation than its predecessor.
Lotus 2 features eight stages of play. Stages feature tunnels, bridges, level crossings and undulation.
Lotus 2 is much more of an Out Run-style racer than the original Lotus because Lotus 2 does not employ laps, but rather a series of checkpoints.
Lotus 2 was distributed on 1x 3.5" 880kB diskette. It was not hard disk drive-installable.
Lotus 3: The Ultimate Challenge Amiga 1992
Lotus 3: The Ultimate Challenge was released by Magnetic Fields in 1992 on ST/Amiga. Again, Shaun Southern coded the original Amiga version of Lotus 3.
- Create over 3 trillion tracks using RECS (Racing Environment Construction System)
- Larger object & actor sprites than Lotus 1/2
- 3x cars: Esprit S4, Milan & M200 Concept
- 13x scenarios (snow, forest, mountain, desert, fog, wind etc.)
- 64x pre-defined tracks (circuits & stages)
- Full-screen single-player or split-screen 2-player
Lotus 3 was distributed on 2x 3.5" 880kB diskette. It was no hard disk drive-installable.
Lotus: The Ultimate Challenge IBM PC 1993
Jon Medhurst of Cygnus Software Engineering ported Lotus 3 to IBM PC MS-DOS 2.0 in 1993. This is a very good port of ST/Amiga Lotus 3. PC DOS Lotus was renamed to Lotus: The Ultimate Challenge because the PC did not host Lotus or Lotus 2.
PC DOS Lotus runs at 50 FPS and displays in 256-color VGA 320x200 with a full-screen active drawspace.
PC DOS Lotus was distributed on 1x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskette and installs to hard disk drive via Install c:. The install size is 1.3 megs and consists of 2 files. PC DOS Lotus requires an i80286 25 MHz CPU and 580K of free conventional memory.
PC DOS Lotus supports PC Speaker, Sound Blaster, Roland MT-32 and Roland LAPC-I.
Note how ST/Amiga hosted Lotus in 1990 whereas the PC did not get a Lotus game until 1993.
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge Atari ST 1990
The Atari ST version of the first Lotus game played as well as the Amiga version, but ST Lotus of 1990 lacked the dotted lines on the tracks, thereby reducing speed-conveyance. In addition, the sound effects and music of ST Lotus are nowhere near as good as those of Amiga Lotus. That said, in terms of the all-important gameplay ST Lotus is Amiga Lotus' equal.
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 Atari ST 1991
Atari ST Lotus 2 lacks the sky gradients of Amiga Lotus 2, there are still not dotted lines on roads, and the music is bleepy and blurpy, yet ST Lotus 2 is still a great game.
Lotus 3: The Ultimate Challenge Atari ST 1992
The flashing headlight intro was omitted from ST Lotus due to the ST's 720K diskette capacity.
Lotus Commodore 64 1990
Gremlin Graphics released Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge for the Commodore 64 in 1990. C64 Lotus lacks the road-lines and sense of speed of Amiga Lotus. Less importantly, C64 Lotus lacks the rotating 3D model and flashing headlights of Amiga Lotus. Overall, C64 Lotus stands as a decent low-res, low-framerate and limited-color port of Amiga Lotus.
Indexes:
- Amiga Game Reviews (Index to all Amiga game reviews)
- History Racing Computer Games
- History of Computer Games 1976-2024
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