Reviews

Space Harrier is one of my favourite Arcade games of all-time. Finding it on the Spectrum was a welcome sight, that was until I started playing it.

Okay it plays smoothly and I accept it being a 48K only game which means no music and no rendition of Space Harrier theme, but the colours in level 1 combined with its scrolling don't mix very well though level 2's colours are a lot better and I will personally need to download a walkthrough from the RZX Archive, if one exists, to see the colours on the remaining levels.

I did like how the game itself played, it was as good as the arcade game at times although you can die rather cheeply at times and the colours don't help with sight on shooting and avoiding enemies.

I was slightly disappointed Space Harrier wasn't more but saying that if I did manage to buy the budget version I would have been satisfied with it. I just wish it got itself a 128K upgrade like other games did though.

Since Space Harrier II is pretty much Space Harrier with some modifications and adjustments to the graphics and sound, 128K music and speech at that, I would ought to prefer this over the original, but that's not the case.

While I enjoy the 128K features of the game, with cool music and the death cry and "get ready" sounds straight from the arcade game, plus a better look colourwise, the game itself is a backward step, in that I found it slower, less smooth and more awkward compared to the original. It's as if the goal of this upgrade was we'll improve the sound, the graphics and in return we'll downgrade the gameplay, scrolling and overall feel, or at least that's what it seems to me anyway.

So this in turn, I guess, is the 128K upgrade of Space Harrier I wished for in my review for the said game, and again I feel slightly disapppointed and I'm starting to even lean towards to original in preference.

So today's life lesson is a simple one - be careful what you wish for.

This game is very highly rated on World of Spectrum, but in all honestly and in my personal opinion, I cannot find a suitable reason for me to join the crowd and agree. Funnily enough, scores on here have been mixed, and after playing this game I can see logic as to why that is.

On first sight, the screenshot on World of Spectrum, it looks like a quality game that someone like me can really enjoy and have a lot of fun with it, but in truth I am really having a hard time finding any enjoyment in this game. Basically you walk around to look for stuff like your watch, entering rooms to find more stuff like a gun which you can use to shoot bad guys and then search them for more items, which is quite fun, but all this is done at a slow rate, thus it probably won't be long before you start feeling bored and don't feel like playing anymore.

It does look like a nice game yes, but it's a game that does not meet well with my tastes and I had difficulty getting into it.

This has always been a favourite of mine and still today I enjoy playing it. I agree with those who say this is the best darts game on the Spectrum, in fact I can't think of a darts game on any system that tops this.

The game allows you to play with two players or the computer, before all this you may choose to tune up your darts and your accuracy with a game of Round the Clock, go around the dartboard in descending order (20, 19, 18 and all the way to 1), which can be a good time filler but most of the time you will just want to play the game itself. Here the normal darts rules apply, start on 501 points and reduce your score to 0 while finishing on a double, first to two legs is the winner.

The throwing is very good and fairly accurate, it can get very easy with time if you keep to a rhythm but otherwise it's still great. The board itself is accurate and I always liked it because growing up I had a dartboard which was coloured yellow and black, the same as in the game, so I always felt like it was my board. A really great feature is the 180 speech when you hit a 180.

In normal one-player mode you face three players in a quarter-final, semi-final and then the final itself, the players you normally face are Del Boy Desmond and Devious Dave while you always face Jammy Jim in the final. To beat Jammy Jim you need to hit a nine-dart leg before he does, if not you just have to hope he misses, he sometimes does but it's rare. Luckily you only have to win one leg against Jim, even at 1-1, you will win, not sure if this was intended or a glitch but that's the way it works. When it's their turn you get to see them throwing which is another nice feature, although they all look the same apart from their face. The bar background looks really nice and on occassion a dog appears and does a little wee after the computer's throw, I always used to think he did some kind of karate kick, thus I used to see him as a ninja puppy!

180 is just great fun, I have always enjoyed playing this game.

I'm usually terrible at Breakout games but for some reason Arkanoid always holds a certain amount of charm in my life, especially on the Spectrum

It could be pretty colours, it could have been the powerups, which is the norm in most Breakout games but growing up I was obviously oblivious to that, so it could have been that. I just always found Arkanoid pleasurable and quite addictive, something I personally don't find in a lot of Breakout games. It just plays really well. Breakout games can be hit or miss with me because they can be unpredictable, but Arkanoid for me is a big hit.

So without question this is one of the better Breakout games anywhere.

I always thought of Arkanoid - Revenge of Doh as a weak sequel to Arkanoid.

What made Arkanoid stand out for me was its colourful graphics and its smooth gameplay, both of which was missing in Revenge of Doh. Instead the graphics are too eye-catchy, especially with its backgrounds which makes things too complicated to control your bat and anticipate your shots. Also, the gameplay doesn't seem as smooth as the original, playing with almost like a floaty effect which I dislike, although it is a little bit easier to control than in the original because it is slower to begin with, although the complex texture in the backgrounds still makes this game quite tricky.

After the fun of the original, its sequel feels very flat. There was, and still is, a trend where sequels end up being less than what was anticipated and expected, Revenge of Doh is one such example.

Batty is another Breakout game I enjoyed playing. It was able to provide as much enjoyment as Arkanoid did as well as provide graphics as nice and as colourful as Arkanoid. The gameplay is fast and smooth as well which can make this game tricky from the off.

Though I find Arkanoid to be a better game, Batty is still a worthy Breakout game and very enjoyable to play.

It's another Breakout game but this time from a different perspective. Krakout is played on a horizontal view rather than vertically which most Breakout games implied, I'm sure horizontal Breakout games existed before Krakout but this was the very first time I witnessed the genre on a whole new perspective. So back in 1990 it was all new to me.

Another thing that was new to me in a Breakout game was options that determined how the game played. Arkanoid and Batty were known for their fast and smooth gameplay but in Krakout the player was given a choice as to how fast, or how slow you wanted the ball and bat to be, so you can find the speed that suited you best. This gave you more of a chance than most Breakout games, given the gameplay was fixed most of time and if you found it too fast you had to live with it, while in Krakout you can just make these adjustments to suit your tastes. The view can also be changed, either play from the right or the left side of the screen.

The game itself contains the same colourful graphics as in Arkanoid and Batty, but suffers slightly in having far fewer powerups and the level design isn't as clear cut. It also has its share of baddies to distract you, one such baddie is a wasp which freezes you when you touch it, which can lead to much annoyance when a wasp and your ball are close together. The game's music is jolly but quite painfully repetitive, not a patch on the highly impressive Commodore 64 version, it pains me to mention that but it's the truth.

Krakout is a worthy Breakout game, but I did tend to enjoy Arkanoid and Batty more, and thus it fails to capture the Breakout crown. But it's still great fun.

Tilt was quite the original game, its concept, for my knowledge, has not been replicated before, or since, unless if it did it came from Japan, but certainly on the UK market there hasn't been a game quite like Tilt.

In the game you guide a ball around a puzzle containing blocks which, well block your path, and pressing fire removes these blocks for a second and allows you to progress. You must progress through the whole puzzle and past all the blocks to drop the ball into the hole. You must do this while maintatining your power meter, moving your puzzle in any direction deplets your power meter and it increases with progresion up to where you lost your ball, or with completion of the level. When your power meter runs out you run on backup power, lose your turn on backup and your game ends. A level consists of four puzzles and completion of these puzzles recycles the puzzles with the addition of a changing block which disappears with movement for a brief period. The number of changing blocks increase with each level progression.

The puzzles look nice and colourful and their setup provides a real challenge. One issue I have with this is your power meter decreases even when setting up your puzzle before releasing your ball, and the third puzzle starts diagonally, so you may accidently waste some of your power just setting up your puzzle diagonally and at the correct angle. Speaking of diagonal movement this alone can cause you problems if you don't get it right. I always wish there were more puzzles than the same four all the time.

Regardless of the minor setbacks and points of criticism there's no mistaking Tilt as a great puzzle game and highly addictive. When the game's cover read "It's a Corker!" it wasn't joking.

Helter Skelter is a bit of a funny game, in that it's pretty highly rated on World of Spectrum, yet reviews here have been far from kind, and I'd liked to follow up on that.

It looks on first sight like a fun little puzzle game, with the aim being to bounce a ball around and hit people, particularly those with an arrow. This sounds like it could be a lot of fun, which makes you see why it scores highly on World of Spectrum.

However, controlling the ball is very difficult, almost impossible at times. It moves too fast and bounces all over the place when you don't want it to, then when you do want it to bounce up to higher platforms it usually doesn't. There are power-ups to collect in the game, like give you more time and freeze the enemies on screen, but they don't help with how the ball controls.

Helter Skelter had the look and concept to be a superb and addicting game, but the unpredictable gameplay spoils it terribly.

Hotshot is another Breakout game with a different feel to it, almost combining a shooter element to it as well. This combination ought to be a good one, but sadly it doesn't quite work out, or at least Hotshot doesn't.

Here you go head to head with an opponent, either the computer or another player, each of you with a set of blocks that you must hit with the ball. You have to gain control of the ball and within three seconds you have to release the ball and hit your blocks to score points, if the ball goes to the opponent's side and hits their block, he will score points instead. If the ball hits you your turn is over. After the time limit expires the game moves onto the bonus round which is set up like a pinball and has only one person in alternate turns. Again you need to take control of the ball to hit the bumpers to score points, if the ball hits you the round ends. You must pass the level to advance.

The graphics are nice with good use of colour and the title music is excellent, in which it's a pity no-one is credited for it. The gameplay is quite difficult as it's quite tough to gain possession of the ball, you get hit more often than not. Even the computer player has difficult maintaining ball control, unless this is intended to sucker you into thinking you have a chance. Also, after you type your name whoever you play as is completely the game's choice rather than yours, so you can be a human with a gun or a robot who controls the ball with his head. You may not like who you play with but it's out of your hands. The bonus level is quite tough too in that it's difficult to hit the bumpers and because you only have one chance you can be hit straight away and your turn can end instantly.

Hotshot could have been spectacular but the fact is there are simply too many flaws in its gameplay. It deserved to be better but sadly it isn't.

Power Drift is another arcade favourite of mine, and so when I saw the Spectrum version in the shops it was an instant buy.

The game begins with great title music which also plays during some races, followed by selecting one of twelve drivers and a course to race on, each consisting of five races in which you must finish 3rd or better to qualify.

The game plays pretty smoothly though slower than the arcade version, which is understandable. It also has a nice looking interface at the top of the screen, showing the character potraits and where they are placed. This is just like the arcade game only much larger.

The graphics in the playing area are nice enough with good detail on the vehicles and tracks, but not only are they monochrome they change colour during the race, which I always found confusing and offputting. The controls work well but steering your car at times can be problematic which causes your car to crash. And at times the collision detection is off, there are times you go wheel to wheel with another driver and pass through, while there are times you crash into them despite not touching them.

Power Drift isn't perfect and better conversions are available on other platforms, but compared to other racing games on the Spectrum it holds out as a quality game.

There aren't many reviews for football management games, so I'd like to change that and make a review for British Super League.

You choose to manage one of sixteen teams from England and Scotland, which can be changed upon selection, so you may change Hearts to Colchester for instance. Each team are then given their players in a lottery-type format, meaning the team squads are never fully accurate, you may have Jim Leighton playing for Manchester United as he did, but as a midfielder rather than a goalkeeper and you may find Gary Lineker playing for Rangers which he never did.

To the main menu where you have a number of options like in pretty much all management games. You can look at your squad and make adjustments to your lineup, you can view transfers within the league and look at the other teams to attempt to sign new players, look at your fixtures, view the league table, view your managerial status and look at your honours, view the goalscorers table and meet up with your directors where you can look at their support for you and ask for more money. When your happy with your squad you can go to the next match.

Here you may choose the match you'd like to be "re-filmed" and view, otherwise your match will always be viewed. The match view has a pitch and the players and in every minute of the game time an area of the pitch flashes and the ball goes to that area while displaying the holder of the ball who is highlighted on the pitch. If the net flashes it indicates a shot, should the ball go to the keeper it's a save, if not it's a goal. This can add an element of excitement as most management games don't even have commentary, you just wait for time to pass and the score updates, while here there is some kind of action which can keep you intrigued. But the players never move, there are no tackles and interceptions happen far too happen.

To sign a player you have to look at the other teams and look at any player who is available for transfer. There is no easy way of doing this other than to look at each player individually until you find an available player. This takes some time as every time you return to the transfer screen you have to look up the team again to look up their players, and you do this every single time. And most of the time your bid is rejected anyway unless you spend at least 1 or 1.5 million, and you can only make one bid per week, so it could end up being all that searching for nothing.

British Super League isn't the worst football management game out there, it has a game interface that most management games don't but it has a complicated way of signing new players for your team. It's quite good but I feel it won't be long before the enjoyment runs dry, as is the case with most of these management games, which is probably why they hardly get reviewed.

I don't like seeing my name on the least generous list on the stats page and so lately I've been reviewing games I liked in order to improve that ranking. Then I made the big mistake of playing Championship Golf and now I'm about to be less generous again, and this review will explain why.

The game presents a number of options to start of with. You can select a tournament to play on, practice to improve your skills, obtain sponsorship, mortgage your house and take out a loan in the bank and view your trophies and world rankings.

Once you've selected your tournament to play on you can hire a caddy and/or a coach either for the one event or permanently. You can also select your hotel, there's bed and breakfast, 3 Star, 4 Star and 5 Star, each with an increase in payment per night. What this does to your performance is beyond me so you're probably better off going on the cheap each time.

So to the game itself and here you do nothing as you and another golfer hopelessly work their way around the course, obviously because our stats are low to start off with and you improve these in practice. Despite playing in different courses the course itself is the same every time and even some of the holes are identical to one another. The gameplay is determined by lines indicating where your ball landed and how far it travelled. Again, you do nothing but watch, much like football management games. There's a slow and fast option for the speed of the game but both remain tedious throughout. After the first two rounds you have to finish in the top half to qualify for the final rounds and after that you have to finish in the top ten to earn prize money.

After the tournament ends a major tournament takes place with the top professionals playing. Unless you enter these tournaments, which you should not early doors as you would be hopeless, these are never viewed and you just see the leaderboard. You can however visit the bookies to place a bet. Crucially you can visit the bookies twice, once at the beginning and once after round two, this is where you can be crafty. Say Paul Aizenger has a 6 stroke lead over Nick Faldo after two rounds, you can bet all your money on Aizenger to win and should he do so you've doubled your money easy. But if somehow Faldo comes back and wins and you lose, the complications are huge.

Doing well in tournaments takes time and takes a lot of practice, it may even be worthwile skipping tournaments to practice more, even though this would be quite tedious. But the big problem I faced with this was I won a tournament, and then the game reset itself. I was so annoyed.

Championship Golf provides a nice idea of being the ultimate golfing champion, but it's too bad it isn't implemented very well and just becomes a constant bore. And quitting by itself after I won a tournament was unacceptable, after all the hard work I done to improve my skills and then win a tournament just for it to reset and quit felt like an waste of my time, and if this happened back then a waste of money.

From my experience, D&H Games made some decent management games that caught my eye, this isn't one of them.

Continental Circus is an arcade favourite but I didn't play it that often as everytime I did I got a headache. What also gave me a headache was its Spectrum conversion. It's a good game but as much as I liked it I cannot call it a great game, for reasons I will explain.

The game has you race in a Formula One car in several race tracks around the world, including Brazil, America, France, Germany and Japan. You must reach the qualifying rank in each track to advance, for example starting rank 100 in Brazil, you need to reach rank 80 or under to qualify for America, then rank 60 to reach France and so on until you have to rank 3rd or better in Japan. As well as reaching the qualifying rank you also have to finish the track within the time limit. Checkpoints can be passed during the race to increase time.

Should you fail to qualify, either by running out of time or by finishing outside the qualifying rank, you can continue and your current rank is maintained. Each track has pits you can use to repair damage if you crash into another car or to change tyres if it's raining. If you hit another car, your car starts smoking, after a lengthy period it will soon catch fire and eventually you will crash.

The game plays at a nice speed with some good scrolling and the graphics are nicely detailed. The main issue I have with the game is the controls, at times it is almost too easy to hit another car or crash altogether, this is because there is no brake button in this game and to slow your car down you either have to let go of the accelerate button or change shifts, both do not slow you down enough and leaves you in a tight spot when it comes to avoiding damage. When you do crash even once it's very difficult to make the checkpoint as the car's acceleration is quite slow.

Continental Circus is a good racing game, but it's also quite difficult due to inconsistances in controls. This could have been quite addictive but instead it's quite frustrating. This always looked nice on the arcades and on the Spectrum, but it's just too much of a headache for me to really enjoy it.

I have a habit of reviewing Spectrum versions of arcade classics, and here's another one, this time I look at Taito's Operation Wolf, ported to the Spectrum by Ocean.

The game sees you on a mission to rescue hostages from the concentration camp. There are six stages in the game where you shoot a swarm of solders, tanks and helicopters, you need to shoot the exact amount of enemies the level states in order to progress. You are equipped with ammo for your gun and grenades but of a limited supply. Power ups can be collected which increases ammo and grenade supply as well as improve health and increase the fire rate of your gun with unlimited ammo. You must also avoid shooting innocent civilians. If you have taken too much damage your game is over.

The game is played with a crosshair rather than a lightgun. A lightgun version of this port exists through a compilation but for this review it's the crosshair, and it's quite sensitive which makes it quite tricky to make your shots but it's better than an unresponsive crosshair, at least this responds well.

The graphics are very nicely detailed, the design of the soldiers, tanks and helicopters are impressive. The graphics are monochrome which works given the amount of detail already, having a multi-colour playing area would probably have destroyed the detail. However, the dark green in the Jungle level (level 2) is quite a downer but thankfully it doesn't damage the gameplay nor its detail too much.

The music is pretty nice too, the title music is the arcade version's high score tune and is actually better than the arcade version. All the other jingles from the arcade version are present as well and sound pretty well.

Operation Wolf on the Spectrum is a very favorable port. It's probably not the best port but on the Spectrum it's very playable and enjoyable.

Dictator is essentially a management game but one of the whole different kind, because we're not a manager of a football team but rather a leader of a country.

You are the President of the Ritimban Republic, or Ritimba for short. Throughout your presidency you make decisions which determine the popularity and strength in the Army, Peasants, Landowners, Guerillas, Leftotans, Special Police, Russians and Americans.

At each month a request is brought to you which you can either accept or decline. As well as determine popularity and strengh, decisions you make can also add or take money to your treasury as well as raise or lower monthly costs.

Then you can make presidential decision, which you can please one group or all groups, strengthen a group, improve your chances by purchasing an escape helicopter or raise some cash. These also determine relations as well. You can keep track of your popularity and strengths by viewing a report from the Special Police, provided your relations with them are good. Poor relations can lead to war, assasination attempt and revolution.

There is no real strategy to this game apart from making decisions throughout the game to last as long as you can. Because Ritimba is an unstable country it's a guarentee your reign as President will be a brief one. You would be extrememly fortunate to last two years, the most I have lasted is 15 months. Over time your relations with certain groups will get less and less and your balance will get less and less, this seems to be the norm and it gets a little too predictable from time to time. Usually after a few months revolution takes place and you either escape of you are exiled. Your game can even be very brief, I was once assasinated by one of the landowners after 3 months.

But despite its shortness and its predictablity, Dictator is good fun and can be strangly addictive though it can be too repetitive and redundant at the same time. But I found myself playing this quite constantly lately, always changing my style, one game I would please the army and the next I would side with the Leftotans, then I would spent a lot of money and the next game I would turn down any requests that would cost money. Dictator's a type of game that would do that, and it's good fun.

Bob's Full House was a quiz show aired on the BBC from 1984 to 1990 and was hosted by the late Bob Monkhouse. It was played like bingo where players answered questions correctly to fill their card in seperate rounds that I will explain in this review. I do remember seeing the programme with my dad years ago and re-runs are being shown today. So I can answer the question "Does this follow the TV show?" The answer? It doesn't completely but for the most part it actually does.

The rounds are accurate for a start, the first round being Four Corners. Here you have to light up all four corners of your card with each correct answer. Bob will give you a general knowledge question and if you know the answer you have to buzz in and type the correct answer. If you are right you are given the option of which corner you'd like to light up, if you are wrong then you are wallied, which means you are not allowed to answer the next question. The first person to light all four corners wins the round and a prize.

The second round is the Monkhouse Mastercard and the aim of this round is to fill your middle line. Here you are given a choice of six categories of questions, so in bingo lingo clickety-clicks, it's time to take your pick of the six as Bob would have said. To select a category you need to type in a number from your middle row, an example would be 22 being Cookery, these change with each game. You do not need to buzz in on your turn, you simply type in the correct answer if you know it. If you are right your chosen number is lit up and if you are wrong you are wallied and the other players can buzz in and attempt the question. The winner of the round is the one who fills their middle line first. The lucky number element from the show which would win you a prize is missing in this version.

The third round is Full House, and the aim here is self-explanatory. It's played exactly like the first round only this time you have to fill the remaining numbers on your card to win the game. Regardless of who has won what from the previous two rounds, the first person to fill their card wins, so you can lose both rounds and still win the game, this gave everyone a chance no matter what. Losing contestants keep their prizes but unlike the show where those who won nothing won a hamper, if you win nothing, it's nothing.

The final round is the Gold Card and the chance to win a holiday. Here you have to answer questions correctly to select a number on the card, say as an example 20, the number can reveal a letter of the holiday destination, if it's not a letter you win that number in cash, meaning you win £20. Your aim is to reveal all the letters on the card to win the holiday. But you only have sixty seconds to do so, with every correct answer the timer stops. If you don't win the holiday you still win whatever cash you have accumulated. You can also lose if Bob runs out of questions, which I don't recall ever happening in the show and is quite an unfair way to lose.

So yes, this follows the show quite well. Its rounds and gameplay are accurate and true to the show, almost completely. But, there is a major flaw in the game that ruins its fun and joy, in that the questions are repeated throughout the game far too much, in one game I was asked the same question about the first man to orbit the earth eight times.

Another quite disappointing part for me personally was no music. Bob's Full House has a wonderful intro tune that is missing in the Spectrum version. Luckily for me I do get my AY version of this classic theme tune in the Amstrad version, so it's not all bad. The sound is minimal, only being heard in a buzz in, correct answer and wrong answer, apart from that it's silent.

The graphics are interesting to say the least. The question screen features the Bob's Full House logo, the four players' faces, the question scrolling at the bottom of the screen, and an amusing potrait of Bob Monkhouse asking the question. Then when a question is being answered we have the four players with their grids true to form with the show. So I will say the graphics aren't too bad at all.

Bob's Full House isn't a bad game really, it's quite good and pretty accurate, but it's just a pity the questions are far too repetitive, otherwise this would have had a higher mark. A lot of quiz show conversions didn't work in computer game form, Bob's Full House has potential to be considered a success, if only they polished up those questions.

I'm reviewing yet another arcade conversion, but this time I'm looking at one of the very best arcade conversions on the Spectrum in Konami's Ping Pong.

Ping Pong is another name for Table Tennis and the rules are quite straightforward. You and an opponent have to hit a ball back and forth using a racket (can also be called a paddle or bat) and points are scored if the player does not return to ball, the player hits the net or the ball goes out. Up to two players can play the game, if one player is selected, the player gets to choose the level of the CPU opponent they wish to play against, there are five levels. The first player to 11 points is the winner.

The game is played very smoothly and in later levels it's very quick just like the real game. The controls are quite tough at first but with patience and practice you'll find they work and respond very well, it's just quite confusing at times as to when to play your backhand shots.

The graphics are very nice with the playing area very accurate with the real game. The most impressive part of the graphics is the crowd, especially the animation when a point is won. The music is superb, probably one of the best beeper tunes on the Spectrum. The sound is very good as well and fits well with the game.

Ping Pong, for me, is one of the finest arcade conversions and sports games on the Spectrum. Its level of gameplay and design is really quite a feat. A number of Table Tennis games have come out on multiple platforms since this game and most of them don't come close to replicated the thrills of Konami's Ping Pong.

Code Masters games were more than often handy purchases, Tarzan Goes Ape was one such purchase of mine and I hoped it would provide me some amusement. It didn't disappoint.

The game sees Tarzan being transformed into a monkey by an evil witchdoctor and Tarzan the ape must collect ingredients of an anti-dote which will turn him back into human form. There are three levels in the game and in each level you need to collect a ring (which looks like a necklace), mask, herb, bones, cauldron and diamond in that order and if you collect out of sequence, for example miss the mask and collect the herb, that item will harm you. You can also be harmed by various enemies in each level, such as vultures, crocodiles and snakes, they can be knocked away by throwing rocks at them. White skulls also harm you while yellow skulls reverse your left and right controls for a few seconds. After completion of the first two levels you get to play a bonus level where you must collect up to ten diamonds in twenty seconds. After the third level is completed the monkey curse is broken and the game is completed.

The gameplay is largely straightforward and quite enjoyable. The one issue I have is Tarzan's jumping which can be problematic at times. But still it plays at a nice speed and for the most part it's good fun. I always found Tarzan's jump animation quite amusing though. Not sure why, it's just the face he pulls, it's quite something, I'm probably childish but I always liked it. The game's title music is a short jolly tune and the sound is quite minimal but still manage to fit well with the game.

The graphics for this game can either be in full colour or in a choice of ink and background colour, and you can even go extreme and play in green and pink. Looking at the full colour graphics they are really good. There's some really nice detail and there's a good amount of colour on the screen. The sprites are nice looking too though they make a lot of colour clash, then again so does Dizzy so there can't be much complaint about it. The monochrome option of graphics eliminates the clash but I recommend always playing with a black background, any colour background creates a bit of a mess for me, but it's entirely up to you, if you want to play in blue and red then go for it.

Tarzan Goes Ape is quite a worthy platformer, certain flaws in gameplay may frustrate you but it's still quite an enjoyment.

Play Your Cards Right was a game show aired on ITV and hosted by Bruce Forsyth. This game is based on the original series that ran from 1980 to 1987, after which it ran again from 1994 to 1999 which is the series I remember best, and then it was revived once more in 2002 for a quite dreadful series which thankfully lasted only one year.

The game begins with a decent redition of the original theme tune, which sadly turns out to be the only trace of sound the game has as there is none during the game itself. The title screen features a nicely drawn caricature of Bruce Forsyth, displaying his overly massive chin.

The gameplay follows the game show quite well. The players are asked a question from a survey of 100 people, one such question being "100 married women were asked Do you wish your husband talked to you more about his work? How many said yes?" If it's your turn to answer you have to guess the number it will be between 0 and 99, example 48, then the other player has to guess whether it'll be higher or lower than that number, they could guess lower and it turns out it is lower than 48 and they take control of the board, if they are wrong then you take control. Unlike the show the game never reveals what the number is unless they are "spot on", I can presume this is done to prevent getting the question again and answering it easily and instead keeps you guessing.

Now it's onto the cards, here there are five cards drawn out with the first card, known as the base card, being shown. The player who won the question goes first to try and reveal all five cards correctly. To do this they can first either change the base card or keep it, then they can either choose to go higher or lower or they can choose to freeze and protect their cards. If they guess wrong or get a pair, which as they say "You don't get anything for a pair, not in this game", they lose their turn and all their progression and the other player gets a free go. They cannot change their card as they didn't win the question. The first player to reveal all their cards wins the round and the first to two rounds wins the game and advances to the Prize Cards round.

This can be as fun as the show but you are better off playing as two players as the computer player is quite unrealistic, they will often go higher than a nine which obviously lower is the best option as there are more cards lower.

The Prize Cards round consists of eight cards total - a base card, three cards in the bottom row, three in the middle and one at the top. This differs slightly from the show. The aim is mostly the same, you have to go through the board starting on 200 points and score as much points as possible. Before each card the players makes a bet depending on their card, for example if you have a 7 you can go casually and make the minimum bet of 50 on it being higher, but if it's an ace you can bet the whole score on lower. But if you lose all your points the round is over and you score nothing.

This is where it's different from the show - you start on 200 points but you are asked a question at the start and if you get it right you get 50 additional points but if you are wrong you lose 50 points, this is missing from the game. Also, when you reach the second row you get another 200 points "out of the goodness of our hearts", but here you do not. Finally if you reach the top of the board and have 4000 points or more you have the chance to go for the car (WOW WEEEE) but here this does not exist, you simply have to score anything and you win. So when I do it I also try to go for 4000, just to make things more exciting.

Play Your Cards Right is quite a good adaptation of the classic show but has its flaws and inconsistances that slightly dampens its fun in the long run. I still enjoyed playing this though, even though I eventually resorted to playing two player games by myself to maximise its fun. But at least it works well unlike most game show conversions.

Before Willy, Dizzy and Monty there was Horace, a rather strange looking creature who had a series of games, this being his most remembered.

Horace Goes Skiing is pretty much two games in one. The first part is a Frogger-esque element that has you cross a busy road to the bottom to collect skis, you start with $40 and each set of skis cost you $10. Once you collect the skis you must cross up the road once more to the top where you will begin skiing. Should you be hit by a vehicle you lost $10 for the ambulance fee.

The skiing part of the game consists of bumps, trees and flag gates, you must go through the gates during the course to score points, skipping gates deducts you points. Bumps slow you down and make you lose control while trees are hazardous, if you hit a tree you can lose your progress if your skis are broken but if they are ok you continue on. You have to reach the finish gate and go through it for a bonus. If you finish the course you only have to cross the road from the ski shop where if your skis were broken you have to cross toward the ski shop again and purchase new skis. The game ends when you run out of money.

There isn't much really to say about this game other than if you have nostagic values to it you will probably enjoy it, that's personally how I feel about it. It honestly isn't the best game out there, nor is it brilliant, but having played it so much growing up and even now I can't give it less than 4 due to the nostalgia the game brings me. But I can't give it a 5 for the reason that it's far too short and there isn't really much in it apart from crossing the road and skiing. Personally speaking the gameplay is enjoyable, there's just not a lot to it.

The nostalgia isn't the only reason why it scores 4 however. The graphics are nice and colourful with some nice detail in the vehicles. The course itself is pretty nice as well. There isn't a lot for sound but for what it is it's quite nice. The title music isn't much as well, in fact some might say it's not even music, but again it's nostalgic.

Horace Goes Skiing on paper doesn't seem like much of a classic, but given the vast majority of Spectrum players have played the game and it can be called one of the original Spectrum games it holds its placed in gaming folklore.

I felt it was about time I reviewed another football management game, so I decided to look at On the Bench by Cult.

The game's name would make you think you're a player trying to work his way into the first team of a struggling Football League club, but it is just a management game. Here you select one of 88 clubs over four divisions to manage, no matter who you select you will start in Division 4. You can freely change the name of any of the teams. For curiosity's sake, for the purpose of this review I chose to manage Shrewsbury Town.

The very first thing you do as a manager is increase the capacity of your ground at a cost of £100 per person, which I find rather useless as you don't even know what your capacity is in the first place nor do they give it and you may end up overdoing it. So I just went 10 extra spectators and moved on.

So to the menu now and there are a good number of options to choose from here. You can view your squad to make changes to the starting 11, sell players or edit names. You can take training and improve your defence, midfield, attack, reserves or all, this can only be done once per week. You can view the league table and your match fixtures. There's the status page which displays lots of things, including your cash balance, wage bill, it's where your ground capacity is after all, the disciplinary points of your players tallying up their yellow and red cards, your league records such as highest win, biggest defeat, leading scorer and highest home and away attendance, and the appearance records of your players. You can go to your scouts and assign him to watch either a particular player from one team or all of the team. You can view the scorers list which takes ages to load. You can make an enquiry for a player and they'll give you a price in which you can purchase him. And you can view the FA Cup fixtures as well. When you're happy with everything you can play your next match. Such a lot of options in one game, even though most of them you will never use anyway.

The first three weeks are pre-season training which allows you to improve your team either by training or by transfers. So now it's the first league match of the season and we have a home game against Torquay United. The game screen displays your squad, your team ratings, in my case 30 for defence and 25 for midfield and attack, the league positions of the two teams which will read 11th for both at the first game but moving on it may read 13th for us and 4th for Swansea City for instance. There's the score and the game clock as well. So there's no pitch unlike British Super League and no commentary apart from GOAL which appears when a team scores, in this case Barnes scored for us after three minutes. I shouldn't complain about the lack of these as most management games had neither of these anyway. It displays a number beside a player if they scored, in my case Barnes, and a letter for a card, like B for booked like Clarke and Hamilton were. Pressing S allows you to make your one subtitution, here you enter the number of the player you'd like to take off and then choose a position for your sub to play, either D, M or A. In the end we threw away a one-goal lead and lost 2-1, and I am quite annoyed at my players.

And that's all there is to On the Bench. Quite honestly there isn't much to this game except there are a number of options to use that can keep you intrigued though perhaps not for the long run. But for any football management fans out there is could provide you some joy. Speaking of joy I plowed through the game with my emulator sped up and I managed to win my next four matches. I guess it's a game you'll enjoy as long as you're winning.

I review another quiz show conversion, this time with A Question of Sport.

A Question of Sport is a sports quiz game airing on the BBC which began in 1970 and still continues to this day. The show has been presented by David Vine, David Coleman and currently by Sue Barker. The show uses two team captains who are joined by two sporting guests on each team, making two teams of three. Captains over years include Cliff Morgan, Henry Cooper, Emlyn Hughes, John Parrot, Ally McCoist and currently they are Matt Dawson and Phil Tufnell. This version has David Coleman as host with the captains being Ian Botham and Bill Beaumont. One or two players can play.

At the start there is really nice title music which I don't think replicates the theme tune of the show but it's still a great tune. After you've selected the amount of players you get to choose your special subject from football, motor racing, rugby, boxing, horse racing, cricket, golf, tennis, athletics or question mark which I presume is random or general knowledge. The purpose of this I will explain later in the review. The player selection screen features nice digitised faces. If you are playing a one player game the computer will then select a subject and players at random.

After choosing a question block to load the game begins. Here we are presented with a nice digitised pic for David Coleman, Ian Botham and Bill Beaumont as well as the players you've selected. Speech appears above Coleman as he welcomes us to the game and introduces us to our players. By pressing D you can alter the speed of this text to either fast or slow. This is where your questions come from as well and it's really nicely done as you can imagine in your head Coleman saying the question to you, or his Spitting Image puppet which would be even better.

So now to the game with round one which is the Picture Board round. Here each member of the team picks a number from the board from 1 to 12, after you select a number it'll reveal the sport that your question will be based on, in this case number 8 revealed rugby. As with all the questions, David will ask the question which then you have to choose the answer from four different choices. In this round if you answer correctly you score two points, if you are wrong or timed out it goes to the other team where they can score one point for a correct answer. This round continues until every person on both teams has selected a number. This varies slightly from the show, where if they selected a number they were given a picture of a sportsperson who they had to recognise.

Onto round two which is Mystery Personality. Here David will give you up to three clues about a sporting personality who you've to identify from the four options provided. If you guess correctly after the first clue you score three points, then it's two points after two clues and one points after three. Here you'll need to let the timer run out after the clue if you don't know as if your guess and are wrong your turn ends. You must answer after the third clue or your turn ends, in this case it passes on to the other team for one point. Again this differs from the show which had a clip play of a sportspeople doing various things without revealing their identity and the team had to guess, but obviously the Spectrum can't handle that so questions will do fine.

Round three is Home or Away. In this round you have a choice of choosing Home, a question from your player's special subject for one point, or Away, a question from another sport for two points. Now this is where your special subject at the beginning comes into play, it's the special subject of your captain, say if we selected Tennis and if you choose home for his question it'll be on Tennis, even though player one's captain is Ian Botham, a cricketer, and player two's captain is Bill Beaumont, a rugby player. In the show the captains never had a choice and always had to be asked the away question regardless although here they do get the option anyway.

What Happened Next is round four. For this round, David will give you an event that took place and you have to guess what happened next. An example from modern times would be, In a Premier League match between Manchester United and Wimbledon, David Beckham has the ball on the halfway line. What Happened Next? The answer being he scored a goal from the halfway line. Unlike the rest of the round, David will give you the multiple choices and the options will be A, B, C or D, so you'll have to pay full attention to the question and maybe slow down the text if you haven't done so already to read all the choices. Again in the show a clip was shown which stopped at a moment which is the point you guessed What Happened Next and they didn't have the options, but again the Spectrum can't handle that so questions and answer options work because of that.

Round five is the Quickfire round where you have to answer nine questions in 45 seconds. Correct answers are worth two points while a two second penalty is occured for an incorrect answer. In this round, David is replaced by a clock which times down the seconds of the round. The round ends when the timer runs out or all the questions have been asked. This is slightly different from the show which gave you one minute rather than 45 seconds.

The final round sends us back to the Picture Board where we choose the remaining numbers with the same rules applied. After all the numbers are taken the game is over and the team with the highest score wins the game.

All the rounds in the game work well given it can't really do what the show really offers it makes up for that well. However one round is missing, the Specialist Subject round is missing in this version which I can only presume it was because they couldn't find a way to compensate around the technical features and make it simple. Never mind, six rounds is more than plenty anyway. The game has loads of questions from different loading blocks which will keep you entertained for a while without things getting too repetitive like Bob's Full House did.

A Question of Sport is most certainly one of the better quiz games on the Spectrum and one that worked very well.

I could choose to start this review with information about the show, but I won't for one reason, because this game is not even Pop Quiz.

For some reason Elite decided to make a game based on Pop Quiz but then decided to use the majority of code from A Question of Sport and use it for Mike Read's Pop Quiz even though despite their concepts being similar, one a quiz show based around sport and the other a quiz show based around music, they are very different in style. And so Mike Read's Pop Quiz has very little to do with Pop Quiz itself. And it's no wonder, because the game was released in 1989 and the original series of Pop Quiz was cancelled in 1984. It makes me wonder not only why they decide to make a game based of this but how did they obtain a licence?

So to the game itself and like A Question of Sport the first thing we get is a nice tune which doesn't replicate the show's theme tune, but it's still a nice tune. Here you again choose either one or two players, select your special subject which there only six this time around, and then select your teammates who also have digitised faces plus there's even a few taken from A Question of Sport as well.

Then it's question blocks again followed by the made up logo made especially for this game along with the credits and copyright info, then it's over to Mike Read who, like David Coleman before him, welcomes us to the game and introduces us to the players. I will say that this is quite accurate with the show as there was a captain and two teammates on each team. Unlike A Question of Sport where the captains were real sportsmen, Ian Botham and Bill Beaumont, our captains here are the fictional wannabe popstars Sharon and James transfered straight from A Question of Sport.

So with all the introductions out of the way, let's play what's supposed to be Pop Quiz. Round one is the Jukebox round and this is your Picture Board round from A Question of Sport. Pick a number, it reveals the subject, Mike gives you a question, you have four possible answers, pick one and if it's right you score two points, if not it passes onto the other team for one point. The round ends when each player picks a number and we'll be back here later. Familiar?

Spot the Star is round two, which is Mystery Personality with a musical theme. The same rules apply here too, three clues are given, three points for a correct answer after one clue, two for two and one for three, a wrong answer ends your turn and it passes onto the other team for one point.

Round three is Your Scene which is like Home and Away from Question of Sport only they are replaced with Easy for one point or Hard for two. Not only is this a lazy approach to recycling the Home and Away round to another game but it has the worst name of any of the rounds as Your Scene sounds like a Movie category rather than Music. Plus if you know little about music Easy questions will be hard anyway. Talk about not trying.

Round four is Guess the Year, which namewise is quite similar to the show as the opening round was Name the Year, but the round itself is very different. Mike gives you information about a song or a group/musician, an example being David Bowie and Elton John were born, all you have do is to guess the year, straightforward and it's basically another question but turned into a round. I think they ran out of ideas at this point.

Round 5 not only matches A Question of Sport's Quickfire round but it is called the Quickfire round. And the exact same rules apply, 45 seconds to answer nine questions, right answers are worth two points and incorrect answers cause a two second penalty. And Mike magically becomes a timer much like David Coleman before him.

And now it's back to the Picture Board, I mean Jukebox round for the final round. Same again here, the last six numbers are taken and then the game ends and the team with the highest score wins.

Don't get me wrong, this is a pretty nice game and can be enjoyable if you love music, but it's just A Question of Sport all over again and it isn't Pop Quiz. That's why as much as I like this game I can't score it more than 3 as it's simply a re-coding rather than an original title. Even the sound effects are the same. It just feels like a waste of licence to me.

I now make a review for something very different, greyhound racing.

Wembley Greyhounds is a betting game where you place bets on greyhounds to try and earn money. The greyhounds themselves race to compete in the Wembley Championship.

Up to three players can play but I'm just doing one player for the purpose of this review. After a very lengthy waiting period which can thankfully be reduced nowadays thanks to emulators, we have the main menu which has a number of options and a timer. You can visit the bookies to place a bet, there are four bookmakers to choose from and each with their own odds. You can also go to the course bookie where you can also place a bet there. The timer is the time you have to place a bet, if time runs out the bookies close. The overall page gives you the form and times of the greyhounds in the race, the scoreboard gives you the first and second count for you and D&H, the computer controlled player, last result gives you exactly that, qualifiers displays greyhounds who have qualified for the Wembley Championship races and new player adds another player despite having selected one player at the start. When your happy with everything you can go to race.

You begin the game with £50 and if you lose all your money you are removed from the game but the game still continues on, you just have to watch races and cannot place any bets.

So to the race itself, there are six greyhounds in every race and normally it's like horse racing where the first one to the winner's post is the winner, but that's not quite how it works in Wembley Greyhounds. In here, we have an illustration of six greyhounds mid-race but they just remain static and the only thing that changes is their number, example the number of the leading greyhound is the one who leads. A hare appears underneath and slowly makes its way to the post, this is your timer. The winner is the number on the front greyhound when the hare reaches the post, and in some races even the numbers remain static too. The hare will go past the post more than once in some races depending on its length.

After this we have the result screen followed by information on how much money we won or lost. The winning greyhound then qualifies for the Wembley Championship races. We then wait for the next race to process and then copy, paste and repeat, and we repeat until we reach the Wembley races. There are 12 races beforehand and the winner of each qualifies for Wembley. There are two semi-finals and the top three qualify for the final and the winner of the final is the Wembley champion. But there's no time for celebration, because when it's all said and done, copy, paste and repeat because we start all over again.

There isn't a lot to say about Wembley Greyhounds except it's hardly exciting. It's just a day at the greyhounds placing bets and losing money. If you owned a greyhound to train and have them compete in races it would be more interesting than it is, but it's not, it's just a horse racing betting game but with greyhounds. The game pits greyhounds bidding to become Wembley champion but this isn't the main point of the game, you earning or losing money is.

It won't be long before the game become drawn out and pointless. I get betting games but I just wish this was more, like have your own greyhound, I mean if we had just continuous races it wouldn't have been so bad but these greyhounds are competing for Wembley to become the champion greyhound, yet that doesn't seem to matter. Seems a bit pointless really.

Having earlier reviewed the classic Konami's Ping Pong, I now turn my attention to one of Konami's other sports games in Konami's Golf.

Obviously it is a golf game where you play a nine-hole 36 Par course. You can either play one player stroke play or two player stroke play as well as two player match play. In stroke play you simply play all nine holes and tally up a total score, in match play you compete against each other with the player with the lowest score in the hole wins the hole, the player who wins the most holes is the winner.

Before each shot you have to determine where you want your ball to land while paying attention to wind which will affect the ball's movement, during this you can also choose your type of shot from straight, hook or slick. Once you've done that you get to determine the power of your shot with a colour meter below, which during this you get to choose the club you wish to use for your shot, the lower the club, the less the ball will travel, for example if your shot is 141m to the green you will want to use your 5 iron, but if there is strong wind heading towards the green you may want to use a lower club. You are aided by a birds-eye map of the current hole on the right hand side of the screen.

As this is a golf game you would think this would be pretty straightforward, but it isn't. It's actually quite clumsy. The map is hardly helpful as it would at times state the ball's landed in the rough yet from the main view the ball is actually on the fairway. Also, the two player mode is easily more enjoyable than one player, especially the match play, but there is a problem which I've encountered twice. When you are both on the green and the balls are near each other it's hard to determine who's shot is who.

Clearly Konami's Golf isn't the best golf game out there. There isn't a lot to this apart from match play as once you play the nine holes that's it, so it's short and repetition sets it fairly quickly. Obviously there are better golf games out there than this.

Bullseye is a darts quiz show which aired on ITV from 1981 to 1995 and was hosted by Jim Bowen with darts commentator Tony Green serving as referee. It was then revived by Challenge in 2006 with Dave Spikey hosting and Tony Green reprising his role as referee, but the less said about that the better.

The show mixed darts with general knowledge and featured three pairs of players, one was the darts player who threw the darts and the other was the non-darts player who answered the questions. In its heyday it was very popular with British viewers, at one point viewing figures were as high as 17 million. So eventually with the show being so popular it was going to get its own computer game.

Right at the beginning we get a fairly decent rendition of the show's theme tune, nothing outstanding but at least it's recognisable. It also features a pretty nice illustration of Bully, the show's mascot. After the tune finishes you are given the option of throwing three practice darts, or more than three darts if you so wish just to get to grips with the controls. Once you're done practicing you get to insert your names, choose the type of game you wish to play, either one game or best-of-three and the level of difficulty, this determines the speed of your timer while answering questions. Bullseye can only be played with two players.

So onto the game now, let's play Bullseye. Round one is the Category Board, here you have ten categories surrounding the dartboard, the categories are Books, History, Myths, Bible, Places, Art, Sport, Food, Showbiz and Pot Luck. After choosing your category you have to throw your dart at any of the scoring areas of that category, the white area scores 30 points, red scores 50, black scores 100 and a bullseye scores 200 points. You will then be asked a question of the category and you must type in the correct answer before the time limit. If you hit another subject you get no bonus points but you can still be asked a question providing the category hasn't already been taken, if a category already taken has been hit again the player loses their turn. Each player is given three turns in this round, correct answers are worth 30 points first time round, followed by 50 points and finally 100 points. If an incorrect answer is given the question is passed onto the other player.

The second round is Pounds for Points, here the players compete against each other to throw three darts on a traditional matchplay dartboard, as Jim would say, the player with the highest score gets asked the question first and the score is the value of the question, so if you scored 81 and you got the question right then you score 81 points, an incorrect answer passes the question to the other player for his score. This continues for a total of three questions. The player with the lowest score after the two rounds is eliminated.

Next would normally be Bully's Prize Board but we don't have any prizes to give away, instead we have more points to score. The board has nine red segments worth points and you have nine darts, the points are worth 10, 15, 20, all the way to 50 for the bullseye. A total of 270 points can be earned. These segments are surrounded by a large black segment and hitting black means you score no points with that dart. A red segment can only be hit once and hitting the same segment twice loses you points, for example if you hit the 25 point segment you score 25 points, but hit it a second time you lose 25 points.

The final part of the game is the gamble. The winning player has the opportunity to gamble their points to score 101 or more with four darts. Should you accept and win your score is doubled but if you fail it is halved and you could end up losing the game if the scores are close. The player may choose not to gamble and keep their points, if so the losing player is then asked if they'd like to gamble. If no-one gambles the game is over. The reason you throw four darts rather than three is because there is only one of you playing rather than a couple. In the show the couple threw six darts, the non-darts player threw three darts first followed by the darts player who also threw three darts, but in this version there's only one person and scoring 101 in three darts alone is quite a feat, so the game gives you an extra dart to compensate that.

After all this, the player with the highest score wins the game or round, depending on what type of game you chose at the start.

In all honesty I think this game follows the show quite well, the rounds are there and the format is largely in tact. There are flaws with the gameplay as there's only one player rather than a couple playing but I think of all the quiz show games I've played thus far this is one of the better ones. And it's certainly a lot like Bullseye than the horrible series revival in 2006 as well as those terrible DVD games.

It's not a classic nor is it brilliant, and it's certainly not super smashing great, but it works.

Time for me to dig out another football management game to review, and I decided to look at 1st Divsion Manager, which was released by Code Masters of all people.

This, like other football management games, has you manage a club and help guide them from the lowest division all the way up to the top division, which I will explain later. The game begins with very nice title music which is done by Lyndon Sharp who done music for a number of Code Masters games including a couple of Dizzy's games. In this title screen comes a very unique option, the game's name is taken from the old English 1st Division which was the top tier league in English football before the Premier League formed, so here Division 1 is the top division, that is unless you choose to play with Superleague turned on, this means Division 1 becomes the second tier and replaced by the Superleague which in turn replaced Division 4, which is just how it ended up in real life. Was this programmer predicting something? It also means that the game is called 1st Division Manager, yet it may not be the top tier league and thus it could end up being Superleague Manager. You also play in FA Cup matches during the season as well.

After this we enter our name and your team to manage, which unlike most football management games where you had to choose a team to manage, this game has you enter a team to manage, so you can add your Sunday League team, you can be Barcelona. Then you have to enter a security access code for the Codemasters Management Database computer consisting of four characters, even 1234 will do fine, it's not like anyone's going to hack into my game or anything. Or will they?

So now to the game itself and instead of a menu we have a nice looking desk with our options on. There's the computer I just mentioned where we enter our code we just created. Here you can arrange your squad by making adjustments to the starting line up and your formation as well as change player names, so we'll replace Dawes, Hyde and Tucker with Messi, Suarez and Neymar then. You can arrange training for your players, choosing from handling, tackling, passing and shooting. There's team status which views your rating and morale as well as the next opponents, financial status which shows your balance and wages and also gives you the option to raise or lower your entry share, the diary which also shows the next opponents and options which allows you to change the colour of the computer screen from green to black and turn off security so that you'll never need to enter your code again, given I doubt seriously anyone will hack into it, unless I've given someone here a hint to try at least.

Back to the desk now, we have a phone which allows you to call the transfer market to buy and sell players, you buy players by entering the surname of the player you wish to buy from the game's database which I'll explain later, so you can type Ronaldo all you want but there will be no records. You can call the bank manager to keep track of your balance, ask for a loan or repay the loan. You can also call the physio who informs you of any injuries, the coach who lets you know which players need improvement on what skill and the scout who'll give you a report on your next opponents, but for a price, and you still pay him wages on top of that. There's the file drawer which shows you your league fixtures, your bank statement, the league tables and the player database which will come in handy for buying players. The newspaper shows you all the results from the previous week, then there's the radio which turns back on the lovely title music to play during the game.

When you're satisfied with your team selection it's time to go through the door and begin our match. In here we have commentary on the bottom of the screen and we also have action on the pitch with the players moving with the ball, just like a football match, very impressive. The commentary is descriptive enough for you to understand, it would read something like, Lycett tackles Sheedy, Sheedy sidesteps, Sheedy passes to Proctor, Proctor keeps the ball, Proctor shoots at goal....goalie dives....IT'S A GOAL, and with this Barcelona are a goal down already, that last bit not being part of the commentary but rather me displaying my disgust. The action is nice too and gives you a good sense of watching a match. The players are small with one team playing in blue and the other playing in red. The commentary can be sped up if you so wish to do so.

So the game is over and we drew 1-1 thanks to Neymar's late equaliser. But moving on we lost in the FA Cup to Doncaster and Messi got injured and now he's out for seven weeks with a dislocated shoulder, and to rub salt in the wounds, when I returned to my desk I get a letter which reads You have been knocked out of the FA Cup competition, thanks for rubbing it in.

At first this seems like an ideal football management game with just about all the features you want, but the main problem is the longer you play 1st Division Manager the less playable it becomes. Player form depletes and never improve so with, that by the time you make it to the top division, you won't have a good enough squad, nor will any of the other teams for that matter. Signing players can also be a chore as you have to pretty much go through all the players in the database individually to find the player you want. Injuries also seem to pile up more than you'd like to.

But 1st Division Manager is still a good attempt of an arcade-style football management game and a refreshing change to many minutes of waiting for menus to load and just relying on your score to update by itself. It's just too ineffective to bring lasting enjoyment. Not a bad effort though.

World Soccer League is another football management game which this time has teams from around the world compete in a league format of two divisions with 16 teams each. The top two teams in Division 2 are promoted to Division 1 and the bottom two teams in Division 1 are relegated to Division 2. There is also the World Club Cup to compete in as well.

The game begins with six British teams to choose from to manage, Arsenal, Celtic, Liverpool, Man Utd, Rangers and Tottenham, for curiosity's sake I selected Rangers for absolutely no reason whatsoever, you can alter your team name anyway, so if you're upset Kidderminster Harriers weren't selected, here's your chance to do something about that. After this your squad is shown, the problem though is there seems to be a shortage of names, for instance I have three Giles', three Grifiths' and two Smiths in my team. Regardless of who you select you always start at Division 2.

Now to the main menu. Here we can check our team to change the starting 11 as well as alter the position of one of your players, meaning you may change one of your midfielder to a defender, when i did this the player's form altered from 8.6 to 8.1 which isn't too bad but they can get a lot worse. Edit names edits the player names and the team names, so your Giles brothers could be seperated or you can name all your players Giles, choice is yours. As for the teams you can choose to update the list by replacing Dynamo Dresden to Schalke for instance. The bank shows your balance and allows you to get a loan, the fixture list shows your matches, the league table shows the current table after many minutes of calulating league data, opponents data shows the stats of your opponenets where you can compare them to yours, sell a player allows you to sell any player to another club, where after you enter their number a team will make a bid and you can accept or reject it, and transfer market allows you to search for a goalkeeper, defender, midfielder or attacker to try and buy. When you select your position you are given information about a player where you decide if you wish to bid for him, if yes you enter a fee and the club may turn it down but if they accept it you are redirected to the main menu. You can only visit the market three times in a week. Just like the old days you may only field up to three foreign players for a match.

So now it's on to the match which you go to via Play Game. Here we get the match screen, which is mostly green with a meter in the middle with the two teams on each side and an asterix to determine possession. The game features commentary which mentions who has possession and who is shooting. When your team is shooting it displays the player who is shooting, if it's your opponents it just displays the team name. At half-time you are redirected to your squad where you can make substitutions which you can do at anytime. Strangely you can also alter positsions here as well, so you may choose to turn a defender into an extra attacker and watch his form deplete spectacularly in the process.

So the match is over and we won 3-2 thanks to an 89th minute winner. After we're done with the match we are shown the player performances which tracks the good points and errors of each player, after which they are given a rating and the one with the highest rating is the man of the match. We are then shown the other results of the division, followed by the weekly finances, then occasionly you will get some news regarding your team in terms of injuries or suspension.

And that's all there is to it for World Soccer League. It's hardly the most exciting game in the world and no sound doesn't support its cause one bit, but it's still a good football management game, even if it seems quite limited with what it can do. But one of the best things I like about this game is there is little waiting in this game despite it being written in BASIC. Most football management games written in BASIC had you wait almost endlessly for menus to loads, but here the only one long period of waiting you have is when it calculates league data for the league data, apart from that everything runs quite quickly.

This is quite a unique game, in parts it looks like it is very cleverly programmed and in other parts it doesn't, but it does play quite well enough to get into it. It's not the most amusing game out there but it sure beats quite a number of other football management games.

I was determined to review something else other than another football management game, but then I saw this lurking around the World of Spectrum archive and couldn't help but give it a look, primarily because it looks very similar to Code Masters' 1st Division Manager, but more on that later.

First off I clear up the mystery surrounding Jimmy himself, who is this Jimmy person? World of Spectrum lists this game as an inspiration to Jimmy Greaves, which is incorrect. The Jimmy is Jim Scott who ran Beyond Belief, the publishers of the game....you silly silly people it's no wonder WoS was left abandoned swimming with the sharks eh?

Ahem, anyway now on to the game, it begins with a choice of 28 teams from across Europe to manage. It includes teams from England, Scotland, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, as well as one team from Belgium and one from what was then Yugoslavia, which is now Serbia. Each are numbered and you have to select the number of the team you wish to manage, so for this review I went to number 17 and selected Lazio. It contains a glitch in the code where you can increase the number to double digits and then when you reduce the number it remains on double digits even when you go down to 9, so that it reads 90, 80, etc, but there is no club 80 so you would therefore manage club 8. You start at Division 2 and the top two teams are promoted to Division 1.

Then a period of waiting takes place which made me think the game had crashed, there was no notice of waiting, it just froze, that was until we reach, of all things, a desk, a desk looking very similar to the one on 1st Division Manager. There's the computer, the phone, the file drawer and the newspaper, but no radio, well there's no music, all we get is beeping when you move the arrow, so that'll explain why there's no radio, but everything else is there, including the door, and they aren't are well drawn as in 1st Division Manager, obviously.

On the computer you can either look at the division table or a scout report, this compares you to your opponents in defence, midfield, attack and position. My opponents, Bayern Munich, or Munchen, whichever you prefer, have stats of 10, 11 and 12, while my stats are all minus 3, clearly I don't stand a chance. That's because I haven't picked a team yet and we do this via the file drawer.

This is very different to 1st Division Manager, as here we have a complete profile of a player, including their portrait, name, age, position, salary, morale, value and ratings which determine skill, stamina, speed, aggression, and overall ability, as well as their appearances and goals count. When you select a player his morale improves, and if they don't play it worsens their morale. Their overall ability, or abilty it actually reads, increases also if they are selected. Among my squad includes a defender called Dave, a midfielder called A. Mole and a forward called J. Scott, this is the Jimmy of Jimmy's Super League of course. Interestingly there is no goalkeeper in this game so I presume the first defender you selected plays in goal. Now that I've selected my team my stats read 10 for defence and midfield and 6 for attack. You can also transfer list a player here as well.

The phone allows you to phone the bank manager like in 1st Division Manager and here you can ask for a loan. You also negotiate transfers here, like 1st Division Manager, but the negotiation process is very different. Unlike 1st Division Manager which had you enter a surname of the player you wish to buy, here you are given a player, in this case G. Palister, a defender from Liverpool, we can phone the player but he's costing too much money, so we will go to next player instead. Now we have midfielder D. Saunders also from Liverpool who costs even more money. So now we've I. Rush, a forward from Montpellier who is expensive as well. When you do phone the player you don't actually get to talk to the player but rather the team's manager, here you make an offer and hope he'll accept it, but I don't have enough money so of course he declined. Interestingly the bank manager and the manager of the player you wish to buy is the same person, or at least they have the same portrait. Oh and remember the newspaper? You can't access it so we'll just have to leave that one behind.

So onto the match then, as the menu desk is similar to 1st Division Manager you would think the in-game screen is the same as well, of course we're wrong as it's a different programmer. So in its place is the score and the time on the bottom, commentary on the middle, a highlights screen at top of the screen accompanied by a commentator who is pretty badly drawn, but still this is a nice touch and quite unique for these type of games. The commentary is quite nice but easily repetitive, there are many times he will commend good passing by the team. When some action happens, like a shot, we have a badly drawn shooter and a badly drawn goalie who look badly outdated. Here the player shoots the ball at the goalie and even when it looks like the ball goes past the goalie he saves it anyway. Or it can go past him for a goal, which didn't happen because it was a 0-0 draw, and we didn't even have a shot. So after this we see the other division scores via Jim Results Service, followed by your match attendance and an update of your finances. Then we're back at the desk before it freezes again which again makes you wonder if the game will even boot back up, eventually it does but this really isn't clever as there isn't even a notice about waiting, but the reason for the waiting is some occassions your physio rings you to inform you of an injury to one of your players, and he looks the same as the bank manager. Also, one for your players can declare that he is not happy and request a transfer, you either agree or refuse.

So how do I summerise Jimmy's Super League? Well it works better than most BASIC football management games but the fact is the menu desk is a direct carbon copy of 1st Division Manager so that loses marks. Also the match screen at times doesn't provide much excitement, there was one match I had that had no action at all, just commentary about possession, tackles and interceptions but no shots, which is very boring, just as boring as watching the clock tick by justing waiting for your score to update. The game does has some periods of waiting and without warning, nowadays we have emulators which allows us to speed up the game, but back then when we were playing these games on a real Spectrum you didn't have that, so it would appear your game has stopped running because it hasn't told you to wait. Plus injuries mount up quite frequently which leaves you short of a squad before you know it, and players on the transfer market most of the time are pretty expensive. In this case the game continues and you play reserves, which almost certainly means defeat, and a heavy one at that.

So simply Jimmy's Super League is not a highlight in the football management genre, it steals graphics from another game, it has a largely uneventful match screen with badly drawn outdated players and is clustered with injuries to your players. There's other management games that were released much earlier which look and play better compared to this.

I suppose I might as well review Jimmy's other football management game, called Jimmy's Soccer Manager which was released before Super League.

The game starts with a period of waiting via a black screen, then finally a please wait notice appears, after this we go straight to the main menu, for in this game you are the manager of Kettering United starting in Division 5, which is your non-league Football Conference. In the main menu we can view the squad which is largely the same from the other Jimmy game. Here you select your team and transfer list players as well as display info about them, which again is similar to Jimmy 2, it displays the name, age, position, skill, stamina, speed, aggression, goals and morale as well as their portraits. The transfer market is where you buy new players, here there are three players to choose from, which for me includes a G. Lineker for Runcorn. After selecting your player you have to make a bid which can be agreed or refused. You can only visit the transfer market once per week. You can also view the league table and change the admission fee from between £1 and £5.

So let's play a match now. Here there is no pitch and no commentary, it's just a largely black screen with the score and a very fast timer, I even had to check if I sped up the emulator, which I didn't, it really is that fast. So it's one of those games where you just wait for the score to update. After the match is over we see the other results and then after some waiting we see the match attendance followed by the income and expenditure report for the week, and then it's back to the menu. There are occassions that incidents take place, such as injuries and players wanting a word with you about a rise in their salary which you can agree or refuse their demand, this actually happens quite a lot in the game and this can get repetitive quite quickly. And when you refuse the demand the player asks for a transfer every single week until you agree to the transfer. So you essentially have a squad full of moaning minnies.

So Jimmy's Soccer Manager is quite speedy compared to the dull, slow paced BASIC management games but repetition sets in probably too quickly with players demanding a raise nearly every week. While it lacks the options of various management games it is largely straightforward as most of them could be complex with a lot of things to do, here it is more simplified. What doesn't make this game fun apart from its repetition of players wanting a word is that your team doesn't do quite well and is quite weak which requires you to sign new players, but most of the good players are expensive and you can't afford them, so you are largely stuck with what you have, which you'll tend to end up losing more than win.

Jimmy's Soccer Manager could have been better, but comparing it to Jimmy's Super League it could have been worse as well. Therefore based on that it doesn't do an awful lot like a number of management games, yet it offers more enjoyment than Jimmy's Super League, I think a score of 3 is rather fair.

I finally step out of the football management trend and this time I look at something quite different. Wrestling. Tag team wrestling to be more clearer. American Tag Team Wrestling to be completely precise.

The rules of tag team wrestling sees two teams of two wrestlers battle it out. The match begins with one wrestler from each team in the ring and the other two on the outside of the ring by the corner. The wrestler can tag in their partner which means they trade places. In American Tag Team Wrestling, matches consist of three, two minute rounds with one fall deciding the contest, the team with the fall wins the match.

From the main menu we can select from one or two players. In one player we have a choice of either single match, which is just one match, or tournament which is a series of matches fought in an attempt to become Tag Team Champions. Two player matches are always single matches.

So now it's time to meet our wrestlers from eight different tag teams. We have Steve Smooth and The Hood, Crusher McGirk and Frrak n Steen, Hippy Harry and Baby Face, Einstein and Loud Larry, Groucho and Jurgen Meatball, Sammy Shy and Mr. Savage, Dirk Normal and Lord Henry and Wolfman and Missing Link, I chose this team because there was a wrestler years ago called The Missing Link, the late Dewey Robertson. Each wrestler has a portrait which describes their character, for instance Wolfman wears a wolf-like mask, Frrak n Steen looks like Frankenstein, Groucho looks like Groucho Marx, Baby Face is a baby and Sammy Shy is shy and likes to hide.

So it's the 1st Round of the tournament and we face Groucho and Jurgen Meatball. We then go to ring where the graphics are monochrome yellow while on the bottom displays each wrestler's health. We have the ring girl displaying the round number and our wrestlers, though nicely drawn are a bit of a problem. Team one, my team, are fresh faced with black trunks, while team two, the computer, wear masks. This is the same regardless of who you pick, which is a bit of a shame but what can you do with limitations, everyone looks the same most of the time so they distinguish a difference within the teams by having one team wear masks. As for the action itself, there's about five moves for everyone, apart from punching and kicking we have a chop, a body slam which is quite hard to do, an elbow drop, a running dropkick and a flying dropkick move from the top rope. The match ends by a pinfall, this is done by pinning your opponent's shoulders to the mat by applying your body weight on a downed opponent lying face up for a three count. You can only pin your opponent if he is out of health and he starts flashing. If there are no pinfalls within the match limit a rematch occurs immediately.

The game plays at a good speed but it's definitely easier for the computer to do slams compared to you doing them, so you're best bet is to spam on kicks and elbow drops, then try to be quick to reach the top of the ring, hit him with a running drop kick to prevent him making a tag and pin him. So there are some inconsistances and clumsyness in the controls, which ruins the fun for me. It also doesn't take much for the computer to take compete control of the match and not give you a chance to make the tag to your partner. Because of this, despite being billed for three, two minutes rounds, matches tend not to last very long.

American Tag Team Wrestling could have been a quality budget wrestling game, but it lacks variety and seems to favour the computer player more in that they can easily slam you but you will struggle to slam him. It looks nice, it just doesn't play the way you'd like it too, which is a shame.

Well well well this is a first for a while....a review from me....not that anyone has actually read my "reviews" or anything like that but too bad it's another one of these nonetheless. As you will soon find, as in if you click on my name for my other reviews, you will see I have reviewed some football management games and I am probably the only person to have reviewed more than two on this site...and this review is no exception as I review Graeme Souness Soccer Manager by Zeppelin Games...which is of course a football management game...or soccer for Americans, or grown men falling over for others.

Anyways, when the game loads you immediately get to pick your team. I cannot say for certain how many teams are present but rest assure it's a lot. Regardless of who you select you will start in the Football Conference....or the Zeppelin League as it's called here. I'm not sure though if this one league or every league is called this...for reasons that will become clearer as this review goes on...so pay attention as I'll be asking questions later. Oh and in case you are curious I selected to manage Halifax Town, just because.

So, to the menu then where we have a number of options to click on with our mouse cursor...even though this is played with a keyboard and/or I believe a joystick or controller as well. You get to select your squad of 11 starting players and 2 substitutes, you can view your bank statements and players wages as well as visit the bank manager or chairman or stepdad or whoever he is meant to be and doing something with an overdraft which I never could understand because I'm thick and all that, you can view your league and cup fixtures as well as the league table, there's the physio's report for viewing injured players and how long they'll be out for, you can buy and sell players although all the players you would want to buy to improve your squad cost too much money so you will almost certainly have to sell players before you buy....and your squad is pretty thin from the get-go so you're a bit stumped. You can also save your game to cassette or load your game from a cassette which is a little pointless now since we have emulators and save states now...but back then of course you didn't so they're there for a reason.

You will notice that there is no music during the menu...or at all in fact...but there's a video on YouTube which has custom music played during the menu....oh wait it's mine....ho hum.

Anyways, to the match itself then and our first league match is against Wycombe Wanderers, and according to the pre-match screen, the pitch is perfect and my scout's report on the opposition reads that the defence is poor, the midfield...is poor and the attack....is poor....easy pickings by the sounds of it then....and yes it was....for them as it turned out!

Now like most football management games you don't play the games and instead you watch....like a manager does...see a lot of people miss the obvious there, you're the manager so you sit on your arse on the dugout and watch the game....probably not exciting yes but it's "realistic" so deal with it....well if you were watching these matches from this game how could you deal with it.

Because this game is viewed with a scoreboard with a timer going down and it is interrupted from time to time with highlights of a scoring chance with one sound effect for when the ball is kicked and is the only sound in the entire game, and they usually come from the opposition...and roughly 70% of the time they score and 30% of the time they don't...and your team don't seem to do anything like 96% of the time...for you see in the first three matches, of two league matches, which I lost and drew and an Impulze Cup match which I lost I scored zero goals and only had 2 shots...yes that's right two bloody shots in three matches and my opponents had like 20! In fact in 12 league matches I had 3 draws, 9 losses and scored 3 goals...yes just 3 goals....and my losses included 4-0 and 5-0....to say this game is heavily biased against you is a brutal understatement!

And by this stage, no-one has bought any of my players that I have put in the transfer list and I still can't afford anyone decent...I did sign a striker on the cheap to cover my losses having lost one through injury....and guess what? First bloody game he is injured and out for 6 weeks.............................and that lengthy line of periods was my will to live sapping away from me.

So what did I do? I reset and reloaded the game and managed a much stronger team....Everton in fact....thinking that would increase my chances....but oh no it didn't, as it's the exact same squad with the exact same abilities and the exact same luck....none...first game against Wycombe I lost 4-1! And so I switched off and it shall never be played again from here on out.

I've played a lot of football management games in my time and I cannot think of playing one that is completely unrewarding as this one. Can you actually win a match? I have not only never won but I've never scored more than one goal in a match...I only managed three goals in thirteen matches! Of course with your luck run out from the very beginning it clearly won't take long for this game to get so boring and redundant. It's clearly not fun when you can't win nor score and you can't improve your squad because you don't have the budget for it....plus they get broken after one game anyway!

So to sum it all up then, Graeme Souness, he failed as Liverpool manager, he failed as Newcastle manager, he failed in Turkey and his game sucks balls as well. If you do happen to be Graeme Souness and you are reading this, hello, welcome and thank you for reading my review.

P.S. YOUR GAME'S RUBBISH!!!

It's time for another football management game review thing whatever...and it's time to look at one of an international flavour, with International Football, released in 1989 by Cult or Cult Games or Cult Fiction or whatever they wished to be called. Cult release a number of football management games on the ZX Spectrum and a lot of them played just about similar to each other, which is perhaps another reason why a lot of people didn't like these type of games and why not a lot of people have reviewed these games on this site....and I just had to break the mould didn't it? A lot of you probably wish I hadn't but here we are nonetheless.

In this game you manage an international team, hence it's called International Football...see? Like most of Cult's games the very first thing you see upon loading the game is the option of loading a saved game...well I haven't got one of those since I'm using an emulator so we'll skip that and I get to choose a skill level....which is again similar to most of Cult's games....notice a pattern emerging. 1 is easy and 10 is hard, anything in between you be the judge. I went for 1 because I am chicken. You then enter the start year, whether it be 1989, 2015 or 6, this again is how Cult games usually start, this is then followed by a printer option for either yes or no....this too is how Cult games usually start so so far it ticks all the boxes of Cult's games. Come to think of it I never had a printer for my Spectrum and I've never known anyone who did.....this is highly irrelevant to this review but too bad I've mentioned it anyway. Once all this is confirmed it is followed by.....waiting....which is the norm for Cult's games......waiting. Thankfully though the waiting isn't as long as these games tend to be.

And so we get to select our team, here we have 32 nations to choose from, teams from Europe, South America, Africa and Asia. For the purpose of this review I chose to manage East Germany, or E.Germany as they are listed here....largely because they no longer exist...well they do in a sense but as a wholesome Germany rather than split in two, quite like the opposite of Czechoslovakia which split into two and what Scotland nearly did from the UK. Anyways, the present manager is M.Hognan, but we can change this...and did I? Of course I did. And did I change it to Davey Davey? Of course I did...well D. Davey to be precise but still it's me....yeah.

After another brief waiting period we have our qualifying group, which have us drawn with Portugal, Italy and Denmark, and our first match is against Portugal....charming. After this we finally see a menu, and there's a number of options to play with. First of all there's your name, skill level, the team you are managing and the year you are starting in....just in case you had forgotten during that time passing. It also contains an illustration of your kit, in this case we are wearing yellow with red sleeves and black shorts which is to my knowledge is wrong as they wore blue, so well done Cult. But the best bit about these kits is they somewhat resemble faces with toothy grins, as if they are mutant creatures about to consume your souls.

So to the menu options then.
1 lets you pick your squad for the forthcoming match, and incidentally none of my players are actually German.

2 views the goals scored and ages of your players.

3 looks at your group again in case you had forgotten during that time passing.

4 sets up training for your players for each position, in this case I went for midfield training and got a -1 for one player and +0 for another....in otherwords no change.

5 sets up your tactics for the forthcoming match, such as formation, team method, style and aggression....are you following this at home? I'll be asking you lot questions later...oh wait nobody's reading this.

6 looks at your fixtures.

7 saves the game to cassette, a bit useless since we have save states nowadays but back in 1989 that didn't exist so there we are.

8 moves on to the next screen when you're happy with everything or in a hurry and want to get it over and done with.

9 is the editor which allows you to edit the teams, so you can put Bradford City in the game, and their colours so now I can make East Germany wear blue, as well as the players in your squad, so if you were playing as England you can change someone to Rooney for instance.

0 looks at your opponents' tactics, rating and "danger man".

And A, because we've run out of numbers, views a records page. Phew and that is your menu....don't think I need to describe anymore of it now do I?

So now it's on to the match itself...at last! And now we not only have your team's mutant face...sorry kit, we also have the opponents as well...and Portugal's kit is very accurate which is nice and it's very different for these type of games for bonus points awarded for that. We have a timer at the top and commentary at the bottom and pressing S allows you to makes subs and changes to your tactics during the game but you can also change your tactics at half time anyway.....and straight away, in the very first minute, the Portuguese have scored and I'm a goal down already...bloody hell all that time waiting and all and I'm losing within the first minute? Don't tell me this is as biased as that Graeme Souness tripe I reviewed earlier! Flippin' norma! Incidentally during the game the match screen lists the names of the goalscorers but once it reloads for the second half or after you've made a sub, they are replaced by ***GOAL*** as if the game suffers from short term memory and it's forgotten who has scored.

The match screen shows no highlights and the commentary just tells you the goal scorer like it states under the team's name anyway unless you reload and the game forgets it, or when a player is booked or sent off, so it doesn't offer an awful lot....which is much like Cult's games anyway so what did we expect...I say we I'm the one playing it...and suffering. And it's also played at a slower pace and there's no way to alter its speed...well you can with emulators but if you were to play this authentically on a real Spectrum like you did in 1989 there's was no way to do so. Well anyway I lost 3-0 and now I am in a huff over it. And if you want to see the result from the other group match between Italy and Denmark...

Italy 1 Denmark 0

And if you didn't want to see the result from the other group game, too bad I've shown it already.

And having played on a little bit I can tell you...that I lost 2-1 to Italy with the Italians scoring in the 89th minute to win and lost 3-0 to Denmark...so three matches and three defeats with just one goal scored.....yep this game hates me too.

Perhaps if I picked England or France or even West Germany my luck will be better but the truth is this most likely won't make a difference and this doesn't offer much benefit. The three times I done training there wasn't a single improvement to any of my players....yep it's as unfair as you can get. And of course as it's an international game you can't make any transfers to "improve" your squad, so you are stuck with what you have. And as a reminder, this is played on skill level 1....I'd hate to see what bloody 10 plays like....probably get beat 14-0 by half-time and have four players sent off.

To be fair it's not the dullest football management game on the Spectrum but it's still pretty dull and it's mighty unfair. Pity really.