I like straightforward race games as light entertainment - and often play them with my laptop literally in my lap, playing with keyboard only. Which of Moto Racer 1 or 2 would anyone say was best for this, if either? I'd tune the difficulty down if need be.

Of course, I'd also want it to work well as a proper racer, when I get the urge to connect up my mouse & joystick on a table, but it seems, apart from the D3D problem, there's not a huge difference there...

I dunno, I'm having all kinds of hell playing with the keyboard on my laptop, at least with the default mappings. That said, the arrow keys on this thing are a little on the naff side. :|

You are saying strange stuff... Cause I'm currently using my netbook & I'm easily winning races using the keyboard on medium skill level. My fingers hurt cause of the small arrow keys, but the gameplay is ok ;-).

My laptop's keyboard ain't too great for gaming, I've found. The arrow keys don't register properly unless you press them the "right" way, and it's also the kind that doesn't allow them and the space bar to co-operate, which makes games that are mapped to them by default an absolute nightmare to play. So I tried remapping the controls to WASD.

Unfortunately that seemed to bring a new problem in itself. Holding D caused the game to freeze until that key was released, making right turns very difficult.

That said, though, it's more likely to be an issue specific to my machine than a fault with the game itself and... well, YMMV, basically.

I just tried MR2 on my desktop & the strangest thing - I can't steer using the arrow keys, but acceleration and brakes work ok (Logitech wirelss keyboard). Good thing I have a gamepad here ;-).

Note: the game doesn't support xinput (xbox) gamepads & on directinput gamepads there are only 2 axis available (so bye bye double analog ;-P )

Is there anyway to get an Xbox gamepad to use the analog stick for this game? It's almost impossible to play with keyboard and using the Xbox gamepad it just has on/off input for the stick, rather than true analog. Back in the day I played this game with a joystick, the way it's meant to be played, but I don't own a joystick anymore. :(

Also I got an issue with Moto Racer 3. I press the button for the rear front view (1st person view) but it doesn't work. Anyone got any ideas?

Hey Wulfc there's this other game on Gog called Screamer that fits your description pretty well. It works great on a laptop using just your keyboard and it's a similar kind of arcadey racing game as Motoracer except it has cars instead.

Motoracer 1 is also pretty good for your needs however, I'm not sure about 2 or 3 though. 1 is really simple though, you click through a few basic menu choices and you'll be in a game pretty quick.

I like the Dirt Arena map because it's the one that came with a demo disc I had a while back. I found a youtube of it. it shows the game off pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZFKJqbvVUw