Are you ready for the toughest test?

ACCORDING to Hubert Auriol, the brains behind the world's toughest motor sport event, the Paris-Dakar Rally is founded on two values: courage and endurance. Anyone who competes in the race needs both, in spades.

Now in its 24th year, the Paris-Dakar Rally has no competition.

Held in early January at a time when most of us are still hopelessly bloated on turkey sandwiches and Christmas pud, competitors have to cover 6,500 gruelling miles across the Sahara desert. Drivers and riders have to compete not just with each other but harsh conditions, sudden sand storms, a lack of water and fuel, plus the ever-present threat of a crash.

If you are lucky it takes around 17 days. If you aren't then you'll be coming back in an air ambulance - or not at all.

The steep casualty list - and several fatalities - has seen calls for the Paris-Dakar Rally to be cancelled or toned down so it isn't so dangerous.

Such a thrilling event makes perfect source material for a video game. The official Paris-Dakar title is out now on PlayStation 2, a platform already blessed with an abundance of decent racing software.

As you'd expect, there's an arcade mode for instant thrills and a campaign for gamers who prefer to experience the real thing. Acclaim has gone to the trouble to license 24 actual Paris-Dakar vehicles. Each one is unique and you'll need a good mechanical knowledge to get the best performance. I found the motorcycles easiest to control, particularly the BMW F650RR and the KTM 660. The 4x4s are fun but too clumsy and the buggies are downright dangerous.

As with the real thing there's no real track as such, each stage has multiple routes to the finish and part of the challenge is finding the quickest way across each one. There are ten stages sub-divided into 40 smaller circuits.

So the game play is up to scratch and so are the graphics. Acclaim's guys have really got to grips with the PS2's tricky internal hardware (witness the recent Extreme G3 title) and Paris-Dakar is a treat for the eyes. The frame rate holds up well, even when there's a lot of action on screen, and the programmers have only resorted to old tricks to hide the horizon when things are really busy.

Gamers who own up-to-the-minute home cinema will be delighted by the inclusion of a special Dolby digital soundtrack and support for wide screen televisions.

About the only problem for Acclaim is the close proximity of this title's release to Extreme G3. Racing fans will no doubt opt to buy both titles but casual gamers could be forced into making a choice. That's a shame because they really are different sides of the same coin.

If push came to shove, I'd probably go for Paris-Dakar and ask a rich aunt to buy me Extreme G3 for Christmas.

Title: Mario Kart Advance. Publisher: Nintendo. Format: Game Boy Advance. Price: £24.99

A FAR cry from the reality of Paris-Dakar Rally is Mario Kart Advance, the first killer for Nintendo's marvellous Game Boy Advance.

The original Mario Kart for the SNES provided some of gaming's very best racing thrills and spills. Ever. The follow up on the N64 continued the good work, even if the purists claimed to prefer the 16-bit version.

So Mario Kart on the GBA had a lot to live up to. Thankfully, gamers have no need to be worried. There is more fun and game play packed into the tiny Mario Kart Advance cartridge than to be found in the entire racing back catalogue of the N64.

The most significant factor in the success of the original was the way the karts handled. The visuals may have been kiddie cartoon style but they belied an accurate physics model that made the game accessible but hard to master.

That feel has been carried over magnificently. Newbies can jump straight into the action and not feel out of their depth, while old hands can shave vital seconds from their lap times by power sliding around corners and looking for speed boost power-ups.

As well as the usual GP cup championships, there's a ranking system that requires the player to amass gold coins on their way to the top. All the original courses are available awaiting reacquaintance as well as a clutch of newer ones.

One of the best-loved aspects of the original was the multi-player experience. Incredibly this has been implemented on the GBA version, too, although you'll need cables, extra Game Boy Advance machines and copies of the cart - so competing with a pal is likely to prove expensive.

As the producers of Godzilla the movie found to their cost, taking a well-loved classic and updating it can have disastrous consequences. Only Nintendo - with its rich and verdant gaming history - could have refined Mario Kart so successfully. If you have a Game Boy Advance then this title is a must.

GIZMO OF THE WEEK

EVERYONE knows the benefits DVD has over video tape, but hardly any of us can afford the £1,299 asking price of a DVD recorder. And with recordable DVD discs at £20 each, that's a lot of money for picture perfect Coronation Street. But there is a cheaper alternative.

Anyone with a PC can record their favourite movies and TV shows on CD-ROM using the WinTV PVR (Personal Video Recorder) from Hauppage. Costing a reasonable £199, the PVR plugs into your PC's USB port where it downloads TV into your machine. The pictures can then be transferred onto a CD-ROM.

Using the minimum quality, you can squeeze an hour's worth of action onto one CD that can then be played back on a normal DVD deck.

Because it uses massive compression to squeeze the data onto a CD I wasn't expecting great things. I was wrong. Picture quality won't approach DVD but it can equal a decent video cassette and there's no way you can wear a video CD out. The only problem I had was with the soundtrack occasionally getting out of synch with the picture.

The WinTV PVR is available from all good computer stores now.