Reviews

Six games in one! So this review will be long winded, get comfortable because I'm going to tell you a story. First is darts and it's much simpler and straightforward compared to Indoor Sports' darts, though maybe a bit too simple once you get the hang of the crosshair's pattern. Still this is much more like it and fairly enjoyable, though you can't play the computer in this game and it only goes on for three legs. After that it's Bar Billiards, a game I've never played in my life. And this was a drag, it's you needing to pot as many balls as you can and 10 minutes, at least I think it is anyway and plus there's pegs to avoid as well. But when time expires you still play on, and why I don't know but it left me feeling irritated and wanting to quit. Luckily you can reset and load a game individually, and I did this to load Dominoes. This is slow paced and quickly becomes a chore. I also was not sure if this even follows the rules correctly as you can just place Dominoes wherever you feel like, but illegal moves exist so I guess there's some rules to follow. It's a quiet straightforward game I guess but I couldn't wait for it to end. Next is the infamous Table Football, and there's a reason it's infamous but that's for another review, spoiler! But this is dreadful, the ball never stops once you hit it and the goalies never work, meaning you're guaranteed to score every time, absolute bollocks. Then it crashed on me, fantastic, but thanks to reset I was then able to play some Poker. This is just like any other casino game except more primitive as you can't change your bets. I reckon it's the first to lose their money loses but I honestly couldn't sit through a whole game of this. And finally it's Skittles, which is a mini form of bowling where they do the aiming for you and you just have to press a button to throw, and I never managed to get them all down once, making me think it's impossible to do so, also there's no sound. But still it's more playable than the others so at least it has something going for it, And there you have it, six games in one tape and only Darts and Skittles stand out, the rest aren't worth your time, especially Bar Billiards and Table Football. So Darts I will give a three as it was very decent, Skittles will get two, so too will Poker and Dominoes and one point for Football and Billiards, with its divided total being 1.8 which I will round off to 2.

1986 Alligata Software (UK)
by Richard Stevenson and David Wright

The name gives away what is this game about, it's a compilation of your friendly pub games, including Darts, Skittles, Table Football, Dominoes, Billiards, Pontoon and Poker. None is particularly great or even interesting, and there are better games around, like 180, which is my favorite darts game. The other games are all very average and even below average, and besides Table Football which to my knowledge is the only game about this theme ever made to the Spectrum, this compilation is not worth it.