🏁Turbo Cup

Controls

The stick and button 1 play the whole game: steering, blasting and nitro. Buttons 2 to 5 are extras for the kids who want them. In the garage between races, the stick moves and button 1 buys.

How a round goes

A cup is four races on the tracks of one world, about seven minutes in all. Five cars always line up: the children on the front of the grid, the world's rival, and Robo's regulars in the cars nobody took. Before the first race everyone picks a body from eight — the Buggy, the Arrow, the Bus, the Tractor, the Sneaker, the Shark, the Ladybug and the Hot Dog — with ◄ ► and button 1. Then the face-off shows the rival and his trick: Clunkbot's exhaust glows before a huge nitro on the straights, but he is slow in the bends, so pass him on a corner.

A race is three laps (four in the later worlds), about seventy seconds. The tracks climb, bank and jump: fly off a kicker and your shadow shows where you will land. One camera follows every child and zooms out to keep them all; a car it cannot keep, or one that falls into a pit, is carried back behind the pack by the Claw, a Robo drone. An arrow at the edge of the screen blinks in your colour just before. The flag falls twenty seconds after the first child is home.

Every car carries two blasts and two seconds of nitro a lap, and a drop: all of it refills each time you pass under the gantry. A lock in your colour hops onto the nearest car you could hit; on a Little Kids seat it is a wide cone that steers the shot for you. A hit takes a pip of armor and spins the car or traps it in a bubble. At zero armor the car pops into a big bubble, bounces down the road for a second, and comes back with full armor and a shield. Nobody is ever out. A wrench on the track repairs your armor.

Coins come from the flag's prize, from hits (one) and pops (three), from the coin runs across the road and from a cash crate. Between races each child gets a garage bay: Engine, Tires, Armor, Ammo, a new car (the Hot Rod, then the Monster Truck, then the Rocket) and GO. The cursor starts on Wrenchbot's pick, so mashing button 1 buys something sensible and goes. The bay closes when everyone is on GO, or when the clock runs out.

The setup card's ▲▼ row picks a cup on its own or the season: four worlds in a row — the Mud Bowl, Cactus Canyon with its sand drifts, Frosty Peaks with banked bends and ice, and Volcano Rock with geysers and a lava gap — each with its own rival and its own rock song. Beat the rival to go on to the next world, keeping your car, upgrades and coins; if he wins, race the cup again with him a little slower. The party remembers a season for the same children, so the row reads CONTINUE when they come back.

A friend who presses START takes over a Robo regular's car as it stands, at the pick, in a race (until that car's last lap), on a podium, in the garage or on the season map. With four children the row also offers TEAMS: the first and third child against the second and fourth, red against blue, each side's points added up.

Scoring and winning

Every place scores as the car crosses the line: 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1. From the second race the grid is turned round, last on pole. Most points after four races takes the cup; if a Robo comes out on top, the cup is a rematch, not a win. In a season, the child with the most season points takes the Turbo Cup.

A child racing alone keeps a best lap and a best race on every track for the party, shown on the podium with a star when a race beats it. Alone, a whole cup also goes to the leaderboard: its points times a hundred, plus the coins earned.

Tips

• Hold button 1 on the straights for nitro and tap it when your ring lands on a car.
• Spending coins in the garage never costs points, so buy what helps: a child who saves can drive the Hot Rod in the final.
• A Little Kids seat always clears the jumps, feels half the mud and gets two more pips of armor.