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A
early licence of Nigel Mansell was planned by Martech
in 1988, and the game was set to deliever where other racers failed.
The
game was actually reviewed in the Swedish
Magazine 'Soft' Issue#3, May/June 1988.
The
game was definitely released for Spectrum & Amstrad, but no C64
version.
The
magazine 'Soft' was a mag only for C64 & Amiga, and this screen shot certainly isn't from the Amiga version. So the 'black&white'-picture
on the scan shots could well be from the Commodore 64-version. However, although the colours match the Amstrad version very well, parts of the display panel are not quite the same when you check the Amstrad shots - was there an Atari version?? ... Additionally the black and white shot from a C64/Amiga only magazine has the panel looking much more like the Amstrad version. Look at the Gear box part in the very bottom right corner.
The
game was to be the first racing simulation to reflect some of
the enormous advances in car design and technology that had taken
place at that time.
It seems that Martech were a little late in getting the C64 version
on the shelves, and in that time they were suffering big cash
flow problems, and so they folded just before the game was released.
Games
Machine had a little snippet about the C64 version, saying that
there were problems with the program, and the release had been
delayed. Possibly too long delayed before it could sneak out.
It
was found recently that 'SIR' who
created many a loading screen, actually did the loading screen
to this game and recently uploaded his unreleased loading screen
to his web site.
SIR
tells GTW that the game was in the playable stages, and they were
having problems getting the music into the game, a faithful rendition
of the F1 TV theme tune. The shots GTW has are apparently quite
advanced to what he remembers seeing of the game.
Interestingly it has been brought to our attention that in CVG January 1990, the C64 Top 20 lists Nigel Mansell GP as a budget release by Alternative software. A mistake?... or was Alternative to release a much delayed version of the game? Food for thought perhaps?
As an additional extra, you can now download the review of Nigel Mansell from CVG issue 74 (1987 December). It seems to be the Amstrad version they are reviewing, but it give you a feel about the game itself which would have been fairly similiar.
Actual
producers of this C64 game were non other than Andromedia
Software, whom may still have a version of this game in
their pocession. Contact needs to be made, and so the hunting
starts.
Hopefully
Nigel will soon be in pole position on the C64...
Frank.
(Additional
source credits - Martin/Stadium 64, Brendan Phoenix, Peter Weighill,
Frankie Teardrop)
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