DOWNHILL CHALLENGE 

 DOWNHILL CHALLENGE from Broderbund is a graphically impressive game
that's a pleasure to play. There are four events to choose from: 
Downhill, Slalom, Giant Slalom, and Ski Jumping, each of which
offers three levels of expertise. The beginning course is similar to
most beginner slopes in real skiing, and the advanced course is
equally realistic and difficult. There are practice and
full-competition modes within each event and difficulty level. In
full competition, you can add quite a few names to the list of
competitors; you may also compete against the computer by entering
"Computer" as one of the names on the list. (This review is based on
the Amiga version.) 

 In both practice and competition modes, the main screen includes a
number of useful info boxes surrounding the actual skiing display. 
You can tell at a glance how fast you're going (in
kilometers/hour), which run you're making, which player you are, 
which event you're in, what your time and split times are, and how
many poles you've missed. In the Ski Jumping event, the time display
is replaced by a distance display, and the event box becomes a side
view of your positioning as you come off the end of the slide. 

 It's easy to control your onscreen skier: Pushing up on the stick
moves you into an extreme tuck; pushing down stands you up
straight; pushing right and left will turn you in those directions. 
Other combinatons of fire-button and stick movements turn you hard
left or hard right, or bring you to a halt. In the Ski Jumping
event, hitting the fire button at the point of lift-off gives you an
extra push that lengthens the extent of your jump. 

 The animation is quite good. People line the course at various
points, and rush out of the way if you accidentally head in their
direction. Flags bend just like the real ones when you hit them or
tap them with your ski poles. If you go too fast over a rise and
sail slightly into the air, appropriate shadowing appears. A hard
right or left turn will plow up the snow. Should you tumble off the
course, you'll turn into a big, messy snowball very quickly. The
background trees -- completely free of any "jaggies" or
artificiality -- scroll in such a way as to give you a sense of
extremely smooth, rapid movement within a 3-D environment. 

 DOWNHILL CHALLENGE was released previously for the IBM-PC and was
faulted for its limited, 4-color CGA graphics. However, the Amiga
version features full, rich coloring and shading. The screen update
rate is refreshingly smooth and fast; for once, the people
responsible for the conversion made good use of the Amiga's special
animation and graphics-processing capabilities. (Too many
IBM-to-Amiga conversions fail to take into account the phenomenal
updating speed of the blitter.) 

 Sound in the game is limited but useful. The whooshing of your
skies is more electronic than realistic, and was probably
synthesized rather than digitally sampled. Nevertheless, the whoosh
changes with speed, position, and turning, and therefore will
supplement your visuals as you try to make it down the course. The
program requires one floppy drive and 512K of RAM, and accepts
either keyboard or joystick control. (The joystick works just
fine.) 

 I'd be pleased and impressed with this game if it weren't for one
very troubling drawback: Not only is DOWNHILL CHALLENGE plagued by
on-disk copy protection, but it simply will not run unless you
write-enable your sole (copy-protected) game diskette. Although some
programs require that the disk be write-enabled in order to save
high scores, they let you retain write protection during gameplay. 
But DOWNHILL CHALLENGE won't even _load_ unless the disk is
write-enabled. The combined threats of viruses, power outages, 
dust, brownouts, and other imponderables make it far too easy to
trash a disk that's not write-protected. I can only assume that
Broderbund endorsed this scheme merely to encourage sales of back-up
diskettes; no other explanation makes sense. 

 That complaint notwithstanding, I highly recommend DOWNHILL
CHALLENGE. Thanks to the game's phenomenal updating of on-screen
graphics, you'll experience incredible speed and almost _feel_ the
centrifugal force during turns along the courses. Whenever you want
to head for the slopes without fighting the traffic along the way, 
slip this one into the drive and enjoy a few hours of brisk downhill
fun. 

 DOWNHILL CHALLENGE is published and distributed by Broderbund. 

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253