It appears that the monolith that is Sports, ("it's in the game"), has released another title to satiate sporting fans all over the globe. This time the fanatics are the lucky group, and if you are one of them you may want to make the most of it as Challenge 99-02 may well be the last game in the series. As you may have been able to deduce from the title, for this final release they've packaged four seasons together as a so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu to the international gaming community.

I think the main reason why this series is not as popular as it could be is due to the unfriendly interface and steep learning curve. After all most gamers would love a fast racing game. While many games, particularly the best ones, will gently welcome a new player and allow them to start gaming without too much fuss, F1 Challenge by contrast is very daunting. There are a large number of options to scale the difficulty up and down, from brake and steering assistance to the adjustment of the AI of your opponents. Most of these though require an inordinate amount of trial and error before you'll find something to match your skills. Expect to have to roam back and forth between racing section and the menus. A word to interface designers out there, "Mystery Meat Navigation" is not big and it's not clever. Can we please have some text to go with those rather indeterminate icons?

Once you get passed some of these problems you'll start to become aware of the detail in this game. Evidently EA decided not to gather information for this year's season and instead relied upon their database collated over the past four years. What you get then are accurate team rosters consisting of 14 teams and 34 drivers; a selection of car performances and 17 racing tracks to try these all out on. Not a bad selection I'm sure you'll agree. Once you've created a profile you can choose to simply drive around on a test day, go for the full weekend race, and lastly compete in a championship for a season. Unfortunately there is no career mode included and it is certainly a missed opportunity to have had one that spanned all four seasons.