Beyond Belief
£3.99 cass

Who's this Jimmy geezer? Jimmy Greaves? Jimmy Jones? Perhaps it's Jimmy Riddle?!

Nope, he's a soccer manager and he needs your help because he's crap at his job! The Kettering team have never been well known for their amazing skills so they need a bit of sorting out in true football management style.

Fans of management games will know the format these things take. There are a few menu screens filled with various options then lists and lists of players' names and details to be waded through each time you play.

One bonus with Jimmy's (sounds like a medical program with lots of blood and gore, doesn't it?) is you get lovely mugshots of the players when you look at their info and there's even an animated graphic of a team manager when the phone rings - amazing stuff!

In my humble (as in lowest of the low - Ed) opinion, companies should always make an effort to recreate the actual football matches in games like this, I hate it when you play the game and only get a clock counting the minutes and the odd highlight when someone scores a goal. How boring! I suppose you could argue that the reason for playing is to experience life as a football manager so don't need the flashy graphics and effects. That's only an excuse to avoid making the effort.

Jimmy's Soccer Manager will probably make all fans of such games jump up and down in delight. The truth is there are much better soccer management games around if you look for them - and you won't have to look far. I find looking at endless lists of names incredibly boring, but fans will always say, 'We were never being boring because we were never being bored!' Hmm, exactly, (Christ, Nick, sometimes I worry about you - Ed).

Beyond Belief
£3.99 cass
Reviewer: James Leach

How would you like to manage a top-notch, world class international football club? Yes? Well I've got bad new for you. You can't. But don't rush off into a corner and blub like a baby that's got the windypops, you can manage Kettering instead.

What is Kettering? Isn't it the sound of hail on a corrugated roof? Oh, it's a place in Northamptonshire. Well, some you win...

And that's what you've got to do in Jimmy's Soccer Manager. Win, that is. You've got a crowd of nobodies collectively known as Kettering FC and you've got to beat the entire five leagues. How? By skilful management and diplomacy, that's how. Oh, and by sacking the crap people and buying better ones.

After all, this is exactly like real life, isn't it? Just make sure your striker eats three Shredded Wheat and you can't go far wrong. I know 'cos I've seen this in an advert.

IT'S A GAME OF ONE HALF

The first thing you see in JSM is the main menu. Here you select exactly what you want to do. You can look at your team, select and drop players, have a quick peep at the transfer market, pop into the bank or generally do anything that you think might come in handy. Oh, and you can also go to watch the match.

When you get to the footbal field you, er, don't see any of the action. Instead, you get a clock ticking away the minutes 'tll the game ends. There's no half-time or anything. The guys play for a solid ninety minutes, so they're completely knackered by the end of if.

If you manage a goal, the name of the striker comes up, as does the time (in minutes) he scored. This is pretty useful for working out who the key players in your team are. When the enemy team scores, you don't get told anything about who scored it, or when. Ho hum. You probably didn't want to know anyway.

At the end of the game all the league results come up. You can call up the fifth division table too, the nattily-named Vauxhall Astra Open General Motors Conference League. You'll usually be pretty near the bottom 'cos you're so crap, but hang in there. You're bound to beat Yeovil or someone eventually!

WHO'S ON THE TEAM?

Your team is made up of loads of fictitious people, with one notable exception - the famous W Scribo, Nobel prize-winner, ace yachtsman, astronaut and Presidential candidate. Mr Scribo is certainly a football player of no distinction at all. So it's best to try and sell him at the first opportunity.

Occasionally the phone rings. You actually get to hear this, it warbles like a cat stuck in a cupboard. If you choose to answer the old dog and bone, you might be offered a pile of dosh for one of your star players. If it's W Scribo, take the money and run. Your players are all so appalling that you'll get about £2.50, at the most a pair.

Jimmy's Soccer Manager falls down 'cos it's not that interactive. You don't seem to be able to train the guys, or swap their positions round on the field. Basically, you've got to wait 'til you've got the dosh to buy someone better. Most of the time you just watch all the match results and hope that Kettering get the odd win.

It's all a bit of a spectator-sport for me. I like a management sim as much as the next man (as long as he doesn't like them a great deal), but I like to be able to adjust lots of details and fiddle about with mine. (Oo-er. Ed) It's also a tad sad that you can't change the names of any of the teams or players. You're stuck with Kettering and W. Scribo, I'm afraid.

The good news is that Jimmy's Soccer Manager is a darn sight faster than most management sims. There are a few long tea-breaks while the computer has a little think, but it's no worse than other games. The control system is pretty straightforward and you don't need to memorise all the keys 'cos it tells you which ones to press.

Sadly, Jimmy's Soccer Managarisn't much cop. There aren't any on-screen moments of glory and the little graphic touches, like piccies the players and the guy who rings you up, are nice but they're just not enough to make the game special.

I know its Christmas and everything, when robins, mistletoe and stage-coaches traditionally go out into the streets and distribute goodwill, love and Masters Of The Universe battlecruisers to all the children singing in the snow-dusted market place. Still, it'd be more than my job's worth to give JSM 100% and a bag of nuts, humbugs and yule logs. Bah!