I guess it is safe to say that most people at some point in their lives have sampled at least one of the many Micro Machines games, right? Hurtling around settings such as tree houses, toilet seats and kitchen tables in remarkably small vehicles was great fun no matter what age you were, and when mixed in with a healthy dose of available mates and perhaps even on occasion some alcohol (not that we actively promote drinking, you understand) the things really came alive. I’ve got plenty of classic gaming moments from most of the titles in the series, be it the time an exultant chum was so pleased with a hard-earned circuit record he accidentally pulled the console onto the floor and wiped his time by turning the console off, or returning to the second version of the game some eight years after I had last played it to find that an epic circuit I had named ‘Jump or Die!’ actually contained no jump at all. You probably had to be there.

Still, the days of people crowding around a screen and yelling at each other whilst playing a racing game seem to have faded as years have gone by, which is why Mashed is such a breath of fresh air. Developed by Micro Machines developers Supersonic, the game is classic, simple driving fun with a pile of weapons chucked in to add to the mix. Looking very much like an updated, polished version of Micro Machines V3, things are presented in the same top-down 3D style that allow you just enough of a view of the upcoming pieces of circuit whilst giving you a good view of your opponents and what they’re up to.

Which, obviously, is a godsend as most of the time it is your chums and not the circuits that present the most problems. Multiplayer fun in these kinds of games was always a rather hectic experience, and to say that Mashed is the same is like saying winter in Moscow is a slightly chilly experience. It becomes clear after just one small session of playing the game against a bunch of friends that things are going to get really quite silly indeed.

Not that this is a bad thing, of course. The general idea of multiplayer races in Mashed is that they are divided into smaller mini races that see each car trying to blow their opponents up whilst stay out front to grab all the points on offer. Whilst navigating around the circuit a number of power-ups are scattered liberally, giving players a vast array of weaponry such as exploding barrels and homing missiles to use at the opportune moment. More often than not this is usually pretty much straight away, with even the most skilled of players not managing to prolong each segment beyond at most a minute.

Collecting the power-ups and blatting everyone in the vicinity isn’t always the best tactic to use, and it’s this point that really brings Mashed up to being a superb multiplayer experience. Whilst launching all sorts of missile-based attacks at everyone and anyone is something that will quite often see you through, there’s also a good chance that skilfully keeping your car in the correct position and driving well will bring home the bacon. Many a time you will see your opponents spend so much time trying to reduce each other’s cars to a burning skeleton that your careful antics will see you stretch your lead to the point where the game will award you the two points for victory anyway.

That being said, you certainly can’t beat a bit of kaboom and kablam. The selection of weapons is pretty clichéd in a way, but that’s certainly no bad thing. Present and correct are such classics as oil slicks, land mines and missiles, and for those who depart the scene early there’s also the optional extra of a homing missile they can fire at an opponent of their choice. This adds a bit of spice to goings-on and allows for a fair bit of vengeance to be afforded, but players who find this kind of thing terribly bothersome can switch it off.

The point system is well designed too, leading to some epic tug-of-war sessions in which victory falls into and then slips out of pretty much everyone’s hands before someone steps forward and takes the round. Each player begins the race with four points, with points being offered in scale depending on how many racers there are. In the majority of our races we had four, with the winner of each segment being handed two, the person in second getting one and the other two getting zilch and minus two for third and fourth. There are some instances where this differs – should you plunge off the road at the same point as an opponent you’re both awarded no points, and if somehow everyone crashes at exactly the same moment (and it does happen, trust me) then no one is awarded anything. The player who manages to get themselves to ten points is awarded the round, and it can take a good while to get there.

Mashed isn’t something that takes an age to get competitive at either, which for Jay was a particularly good news as the people he ended up playing against were savvy veterans. Within a few games he was able to use weapons to their full potential and weave his way between explosions well enough to score reasonably well. The fact that he wasn’t able to win an actual full race proper for a good fortnight or so was more down to his lack of natural skill and judgement than being inexperienced, and the fact he didn’t get frustrated during round upon round of rather frequent defeat stands as a telling testament to how enjoyable things are, even when you’re on the wrong end of a score line.

Even with the dawn of the new generation of consoles and the onset of massive online gaming sessions, Mashed is most certainly a game you need to dig out of whichever second-hand bargain bin you can find it in. It goes a long way to prove that there’s still a very big place for the classic multiplayer gaming environment with a group of mates crowded around your living room telly, spilling beer on the carpet and moaning about the onset of adulthood and all its obligations. Times may have moved on and gaming may have changed, but as a slice of misty-eyed entertainment with a massively addictive streak of fun, you really cannot do better than this.