Split Second Velocity split-screen

After I got back with the Bratii and we'd settled down and had some food we moved onto Split Second the car-racing-explosion game.

The nice things about this game is that it features a split-screen option to allow two people to race against each other locally rather than networked; so many games seem to forego this in favour of online multiplayer. Even nicer playing like this doesn't mess up your statistics. You just have Player 1 and Player 2 and it measures wins until you leave that section.

However we did have one problem - we couldn't seem to choose any of the cars shown other than that which had been pre-chosen. We still had fun and Major is still looking to save up and buy it for the X-Box while Minor's still unchuffed that he can't get it for the PS2, but the races were uneven.

After they left I went back to it; sure there must be a way to do this - the manual was no help at all; I looked online and found no-one asking about split second split screen choose car garage and various other keywords so it must be something I'm not doing.

How it works is you select the Split Screen option; then you choose a race type; then a race-course. At this point you see a car on screen and Player 1 is told to press X. Then press X to continue, Circle to go back, or Triangle to change the colour of the car. Press X and you get a repeat but for Player 2. Meanwhile there's a garage of cars top right all grayed out bar the current one. Much fiddling and it turns out you press X to get to the car and then choose a car rather than trying to choose a car then press X.

Sounds obvious; but from the layout of the screens it does appear that the choice should be made on the first screen; not the second. Ah well now I know and we can have some more even races.

As an aside I killed the laughter when Minor got frustrated and threw the controller down. "You don't ever throw my controllers around like that; ever!". Must have been my tone of voice or expression, but I've never seen either look so scared. Soon went back to the fun, but both Minor and Major passed controllers with no bickering or grabbing after that. Ah the POWER! :-)