REPLAY

More fun than a bouncy castle, better looking than a double cheeseburger. It's JON PILLAR and RICH PELLEY!

Zeppelin
£2.99 cass
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

Cricket, eh? It's a game of two innings. Or sometimes four. Or none if it's raining. Ah - it's always strangely comforting ti start a review with an old cliche or two.

Anyway, World Cricket is a Football Manager style game with a slightly different perspective. By far the most noticeable difference is that, unlike most footy manager games, there isn't actually any football - just cricket. I mean, it would be pretty stupid calling it World Cricket if it was a football management game, wouldn't it? The second, and slightly less patronising, discrepancy lies in how the game is actually played. There's no need to fart around arranging matches, buying players and all that malarkey (there are no options to do so), leaving you (once teams and game lengths have been chosen) to get straight into the first match.

Tragically though, there's little to actually get into. Firstly you browse over your team's fundamentals, and then set the batting and bowling orders. Once the match has commenced, it's all a tedious matter of pressing fire, watching a scoreboard and re-adjusting the batsman/bowler when necessary. And that's all that you can do - the game takes place almost by itself, with you contributing very little to the proceedings. Just as in the real game, you feel as if you want to get up and do something rather than, metaphorically speaking, sitting on the side making daisy chains all the time. The main problem is that, although its well presented and easy to get into, it's about this much annoying (extends arms far apart), and only this much fun (brings hand close together) to play.

To be perfectly honest, it's a bit naff.

Label: Zeppelin
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £3.99 Tape, N/A Disk
Reviewer: Steve Keen

If, like me, you think cricket was invented to reinforce the fact that Sunday in the local park is the most boring day of the week, it will be no surprise to you that Zeppelin's game captures this suicidal atmosphere almost exactly with World Cricket.

This is without doubt the most accurate simulation of this mind numbingly boring event you could imagine. If you're expecting fast paced on hands cricketing action look elsewhere as the most you can expect to see here it a couple of seconds of preset-set animation from a library of three scenes.

The game takes the form of a series of tables. You hand pick your team from a list of fast bowlers, opening batsmen and the like and enter into your selected tour. Separate icons such as medic, which reports on player injuries and fitness and tour report will keep you informed on the progress of your team. All 'action' takes place on the score board where the numbers rotate according to play, giving you the option to change the bowler after each over. When a player is out the appropriate piece of animation shows roughly what happened find is the only thing that breaks the monotony until this too becomes boring.

If only there had been some action coupled with the animation it could have been a different story. How much fun you can get from watching numbers change on a score board is your own opinion but if you were one of those people that played cricket at school with a pen, paper and those odd shaped metal dice, you'll love it.

GARTH:
Oh dear. Is this a good time to admit to the fact that I was one of those spotty oiks that played cricket with a pen, paper and dice? Well, whatever you think, there's a management game here that is okay. Pity there aren't any dice though!