GP 500 Developer: Microprose Publisher: Hasbro Interactive Category: Motorcycle System Req: P200, 32 MB RAM, 250 MB HD, D3D card, Compatible Soundcar, Win 95/98 Might look like: Superbike Date posted: 30 January 2000 Written By: Dirk - This game was tested on Pentium III 600Mhz, 128Mb Ram, Geforce 256 Annihilator Pro, Windows98 - A little Introduction In GP 500 you are one of the 24 competitors in the 500 cc Motorbike World Championship. You can ride all the bikes of the 1998 World Championship and you can replace whatever rider you like. The Manual The manual is rather thin when you compare it with the real book you got with Grand Prix 2, that other great game from MicroProse. In 52 pages in English, MicroProse explains everything there is to know about GP 500. The manual starts off with the system requirements and goes on with a little help when installing the game. In the second chapter you can find some more information on having a quick start with the game and the third chapter learns you how to choose a bike, a track and how to decide between time trials, a single race or a full championship. Since the game itself is also very clear, you can find out a lot about how GP 500 really works by just wandering through the different menu's of the game. Goodbye Mick! Michael Doohan is undoubtedly the most successful rider of the last decade. The Honda-rider has retired at the end of the 1999 season after getting injured in the beginning of the year. So it's up to you to replace Doohan and go for a victory in one of the Grand Prix or you can even try to clinch the title at the end of the season. MicroProse hasn't organised the game as such, but if you want you can always start racing with the "number one" plate of Australian Ace Doohan. But you can also opt to ride the MuZ bike of Italian Dario Romboni or even a bike of one of the privateers. GP 500 has been developed by MicroProse, a software-company famous for it's flight- and motorracingsimulations. With GP 500 they enter a new domain where other publishers have already set their marks. Especially Electronic Arts struck gold when they introduced Superbike in spring 1999. GP 500 will be a fierce competitor for Superbike because the gameplay and the graphics of both games are really great and surprisingly realistic. MicroProse has set the same standards for GP 500 as the ones they used for Grand Prix 2. This means that the game contains a lot of nice tracks and a driveability that grabs you to the throat. The result is that you will need a steep learning curve to get to the top of the tables.    A "bit" of a problem But before you can try to make your way to the top, you will have to install the game first. Installing GP 500 is easy and you have a choice between a minimum, a maximum or a typical installation. When you go for the maximum installation the game will run almost entirely from your hard drive, but GP 500 will take some "600 MB" of free disk space. Therefore you can better decide to install "typical", which requires "only" 450 MB of free disk space. After installing the game, I received to my surprise a message that a lot of things were wrong with my pc. Since I installed the game on my brand new computer I was astonished with this message. I already wanted to phone the shop where I bought the damned computer and it was only after installing another game which gave the same errors, that I discovered the problem, because the second game asked me if it should reconfigure the resolution of my video card. GP 500 needs a 16-bit configuration and a resolution of at least 640x480, so that was why the game told me that my pc wasn't working properly, but without giving me a clear clue about what was wrong. Next Page Up Previous Page If you want to review your favorite game, or if you work with a computer game company and want your products reviewing, mail info@playdevil.com. All contributions are welcome. Any problems and/or suggestions are always appreciated on webmaster@playdevil.com Nothing of this entire Site, animation & logo's included, may be reproduced, stored, saved, transmitted, in any form or means, electronic, written or otherwise without the prior permission of PlayDevil. Other Logos & Names are Copyrighted Material of its respectful owners. All Rights Reserved. PlayDevil Productions © 199/8-199/9-200/0 "rip your own stuff"