This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
BT The P: Edited the bit on drag racing. Nitrous oxide, a gas dispensed from tanks, is not the same thing as nitromethane, a liquid which is 90% of the fuel in a top fuel car's tank; the rest being methanol. It is accurate that drag racing is the only sport where a nitrous injector is legal for certain classes, but it's only in modified stock, and they run on ordinary gas.
Nitromethane is really cool stuff, by the way. It needs far less air than gasoline to burn. At the same boost pressure and therefore oxygen content in the combustion chamber, you can burn about nine times as much fuel, and therefore get more power per revolution. It makes a V8 racing engine that ordinarily might make 500 hp deliver 8000-some. Of course, you burn 22 gallons of the stuff in a quarter-mile race.
Hmm....should the golden mushroom (as many boosts as fast as you can press the button) by mentioned for Mario Kart? Also, I remember Ivan Ironman Stewart's "Super Off Road", where you could pick up and buy nitros.
Drow Lord: Does this trope count for games with vehicles that have their own "boosts," not as powerups or environmental factors? I was thinking the nitro-equipped bikes from Road Rash or Star Wars: Episode One Racer's boost ability (which actually has accompanying cooling problems).
