This is part two of my look at the Micro Machines series. See part one here.

After the success of Micro Machines, Codemasters decided a sequel was in order. Production began in 1993 with a targeted release window of November 1994. Unfortunately the original programmer for Micro Machines, Andrew Graham, had returned to university and was unavailable during the development of this sequel. Codemasters would instead turn to a local developer, Supersonic Software, to assist. Supersonic were a developer that had worked with Codemasters before on a range of titles including one that I was particularly fond of as a child, Super Stuntman. Peter Williamson would take the bulk of the programming work for Micro Machines 2 with another local firm and repeat collaborator, Big Red Software, assisting with some of the graphics. Big Red Software had also previously worked with Codemasters on such “classics” as Seymour Goes to Hollywood. Another game that I greatly enjoyed as a child for some reason.

The phrase “more of the same” could possibly be applied to Micro Machines 2 but that would be a little unfair to it. It’s indeed more of the same kind of thing that made the original Micro Machines so popular but it does it with more variety and polish than the original. It’s more of everything that was good about its predecessor but better.

In Micro Machines 2 you have over 50 tracks in 16 different environments with a vehicle for each, many of which are new to this game. Some of the levels are similar to what we’ve seen before like the classroom, workshop, kitchen table and garden but also we’ve got some great new ones such as a pinball table, treehouse and even a toilet seat. The switch to the Megadrive as the lead platform allowed Supersonic to not only make the game look nicer but also make the stages much more detailed and even add animated features and moving track hazards.

The graphics, although much improved from the original were not especially well received by all reviewers at the time. They’re simple, bold and colourful which to me fits with the theme of racing toy cars around and their simplicity has led to them aging rather well in my opinion. There’s a lot of copy-pasted trackside detail but that was in an effort to save space on the cartridge. Another way in which the developers saved space was to create a lot of symmetrical objects which allowed them to be mirrored. Saving space not only allowed Codemasters to avoid the use of a higher capacity cartridge but also left room for things such as the huge animated chainsaw in one of the workshop stages.

Probably the biggest step up from the first Micro Machines is the improved vehicle physics. Improving the scope of the game was one of the big aims of the team and the handling was one of the main areas where they tried to accomplish this. Peter Williamson told Retro Gamer magazine the following.

“We took lots of the ideas and elements from Micro Machines and we tried hard to capture, and hopefully go beyond, what made Andrew’s original such a great game […] We wanted to add variety and depth, where different cars and tracks were a slightly different experience.”

“The physics were programmed with various input variables, such as power, air friction, tyre friction and wheel lock. Tweaking these made the cars behave differently. After that it was a case of play and tweak, then repeat endlessly.”

Retrogamer, issue 151, January 2016

This change in the vehicle handling is very noticeable with the various cars all feeling slightly different. Larger, heavier vehicles such as the dump trucks that you race on the dinner table handle very differently from the dragsters that you race in the bathroom for example. It’s not exactly rFactor but different vehicles do feel lighter or heavier and accelerate and corner differently from one another. This difference in feel is also bolstered by improved sound effects which give an enhanced impression of the differing amounts of vehicle size and engine power.

The basic structure of Micro Machines 2 is a little different from its predecessor with some new game modes. For a single player you have the classic “Challenge” and “Head to Head” modes but with the addition of two newcomers, “Super League” and “Time Trial” . This gives you a bit more to do if you’re playing alone as the first game was quite limited in that regard. As with the original, multiplayer is still where things really come together with all the action of the first game but with the addition of team and elimination modes. The latter of which can support up to 16 total players. The big boost to the multiplayer aspect of  the Sega Megadrive version of Micro Machines 2 is the use of the “J-Cart”. This special cartridge, which was first used for Pete Sampras Tennis, had two additional gamepad ports built into it. This allowed up to four controllers to be connected to the console without any additional adapters. If two people shared the same controller you could potentially have 8 people playing this game on the same console at once. This would obviously have been an unwieldy arrangement and I doubt many people did it, but it was still possible. This was a pretty special thing to do in 1995 but sadly it came quite late in the life of the system so it was only used for a few games, most of which were in this very series. I recall using the J-Cart’s additional controller ports to play this game and its successor and it was great fun to play with 4 people.

As I have said, the lead platform for Micro Machines 2 was the Sega Megadrive. It came out in Europe only in November 1994 with Game Gear, SNES and Game Boy versions following throughout 1995 and 1996. Again these were only in Europe. The only official North American release of Micro Machines 2 was for MS-DOS. This is actually quite a good version which includes a track construction set. The DOS version was the only one to feature this construction set, however the next iteration on the Megadrive would include it and I’ll be saving that as a point of interest for when I get onto talking about that particular game.

Overall Micro Machines 2 Turbo Tournament is not only a fantastically alliterative name but it’s also a great sequel to what was already a good game. It takes everything that was good about the original Micro Machines and builds upon it to give a bigger and better experience all round. I would say the Megadrive version is the one I would pick to play today as it’s the original platform for it. Just be aware that it was a PAL only-release so it is meant to run at 50fps. You can make it run faster by putting it an NTSC machine (or setting your emulator to be one) but it will run a little too fast and in my opinion handle a little worse as it just wasn’t designed to run at those speeds. If you really want it to run at 60fps then I would suggest playing the DOS version.