Producer: Argus Press Software
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £9.99
Language: Machine code
Author: Mind Games and Concept Software

Golf certainly seems to be gaining in popularity these days, at least in the silicon if not actually on the green. Nick Faldo Plays The Open is based entirely on the Royal St. Georges golf course, where the famous annual Open Championship was hosted for the tenth time this century a few weeks ago. This simulation brings you all the hazards of this very difficult 18 hole golf course, and comes with a guide to the St. Georges course giving a detailed map of each hole, together with hints and tips (but no pokes).

One of the drawbacks with golf games has always been telling the computer just what it is that you want to do. This game tackles that problem with icons. The screen is split into two: the upper half gives a bird's eye view of your ball's position on the course, while the lower half is divided up into seven more sections, four of which allow you to input information.

Once you've selected the hole you want to play, you are told the distance between the hole and the tee, the par for that hole, the number of strokes you've played on that hole, and the total number of shots taken for the contest so far.

Underneath the hole number there are two white triangles, one pointing up the other pointing down. To select a hole number, move the little hand over a triangle: pressing the fire button increments or decrements the hole number, depending on which triangle you've selected. The strength bar indicates the amount of thump you intend to give the ball, and this is adjusted the same way. Selecting the angle of shot is equally as cunning you move a little ball around the perimeter of the circle. When you play the stroke, the ball will fly off in the direction given by the imaginary line drawn through the centre of the circle and the ball on its perimeter.

Selecting a club is simply a matter of moving the list of available clubs until the one you want appears in the window. Before you make your shot you might just like to check where the hole is in relation to the tee, and this can be done by moving the hand over the map change icon. The map remains visible while you hold down fire. A moving bar graph indicates wind strength, while wind direction is shown by an arrow.

When you've decided how to play your shot, moving the cursor over to the little picture in the bottom centre initiates play. The plump chap on the left is your caddie, and you are the fellow in plus fours. Press fire and a speech bubble appears from the golfer specifying the required club. The caddie replies 'OK' unless he thinks you are making a mistake, in which case he asks 'are you sure'. Either rethink the matter or say 'yes' by pressing the fire button again.

The caddie will then turn and pass you the club of your choice. Your golfer then goes through the swing and makes the shot at this point you can make final adjustments to your shot using the joystick. Although the caddie appears a nice chap, he's quick to make snide remarks after you finally manage to put the ball away after only 253 shots. All that's missing is a 'bash the caddie on the head' icon.

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joystick: any
Keyboard play: very good
Use of colour: average
Graphics: clever
Sound: hardly any
Skill levels: one
Lives: N/A
Screens: N/A

The Open endorsed by Nick Faldo is of course a golf game, no wait! this one is different and is a significant improvement on most golf games. For a start the graphics are colourful, smooth and fairly detailed. The course is shown well on the map. The icons make setting up a shot a doddle and your stroke can be 'fine tuned' with a joystick. The best golf game to date, but with a bit of a price draw back.

This is a very fine golf simulation. Being anything but a golf fan I quite enjoyed this game in its own right. The icons are a pleasure to use. My only reservations concern the ball. In most cases it's pretty easy to follow but every now and then you have to study the screen very hard indeed to find where the ball has got to. I dare say that most golfers spend a great deal of time looking for their balls so perhaps this adds to the realism. However, this should not be the case when it comes to the putting green, where clash caused by the ball and the pole obscures the ball's position, making that all important putt nearly impossible. On the whole this is a great simulation and suitable for non golfers.

I've always enjoyed golf, both the real game and as a computer simulation. The Spectrum has been rich in such games, some of them quite good, but no one has yet provided us with such a fluent, enjoyable or realistic simulation as this one. Even non-golf loving players might find Nick Faldo a source of fun. For the first time, I feel playing skill has really been allowed to have a direct effect on the way the game develops. And by using icons, club selection, angle and strength of hit becomes the natural thing it should be rather than the more usual tedium of countless button hitting. This is an excellent simulation and well worth investigating.

REMAKE REMODEL

Those cheapie re-releases, sifted and sorted by Marcus Berkmann.

Yup, games these days are like cats - they have about nine lives. First we see them on full price labels, then they reappear on various compilations, then they're out again as cheapies. In the past YS hasn't taken an awful lot of notice, but there are so many now, we just can't ignore 'em. So here's the first Remake Remodel, and the first person to write in and tell us what that reference is, wins three cheapies!

Bug-Byte
£1.99

Golf sim that predated Leaderboard, and as you might expect, it doesn't come close to that nifty little number, neither in graphics, gameplay or general design. That said, it's by no means a heap of biggies. You have the standard choice of clubs, and you can regulate direction and strength. You'll have wind to contend with (That's your problem! Ed), but your only real difficulty is putting - there's no close-up facility so it's virtually impossible to be at all accurate. Nice try, but rendered obsolete by games that have followed.

Ross: How can you fit the whole of the Royal St George's golf course into a Speccy. Here's how, but it takes over nine hundred screens. You'll also get a hole-by- hole account of the course plus maps and history lesson.

Load up and then choose your joystick option. The Protek didn't seem to work too well for me but you can use the redefinable keyboard option to set this up.

If you take a look at the screen shot you'll be able to see the game layout. The top half shows a section of the course drawn in isometric perspective with your ball slap bang in the middle. Below this are seven windows giving you control over the golfer and how well he goes to it. You can increase or decrease the strength of your shots, adjust the angle through 360 degrees and choose the club you want to use. You can only make a shot when you've chosen a club and the caddy approves of it.

It's got to be said that I'm pretty crazy on the golf course, well, OK, the crazy golf course but the real thing's never appealed. So, this must have had me hooked as I really enjoyed knocking a ball about the screen. 3/5 HIT

Roger: Dennis Thatcher might like it but I didn't. I'd never use any club that'd have me as a member! 2/5 MISS

Rick: Any ol' iron, any ol' iron. Well, that didn't go down too well with my caddy who soon got very cheesed off with me. All good fun. 3/5 HIT

Publisher: Argus
Price: £9.99
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Kempton, Cursor, Sinclair. Fuller

With remarkable originality Argus has produced a golf game. Not just any golf game, you understand, but Nick Faldo's absolutely faithful Open with stunning 900 screen map.

The screens show the Royal St George's golf course, venue for the 1985 British Open. A close-up of your position is given, with controls for selection of club, direction of shot and strength. There's a picture of the golfer and a portly caddy who hands him the clubs and makes sarcastic comments on your lack of prowess.

All these selections are icon-driven, with a little hand which you move round the screen until it points at the option you want.

The map shows the familiar mildewed carpet of golf simulations, with black fairways and smooth greens.

Approach shots are OK, but when you reach the green, even the magnified view cannot show what is happening. The closer you get to the hole the more difficult it is to judge direction, which is ridiculous.

All your brilliance at gauging wind 22 and whatnot to reach the green in two on a par five hole goes for nothing as you miss five two-foot putts on the trot. It also seems weird that a full-strength putt may not carry to the hole.

It is certainly one of the prettiest and friendly Golf games we have seen, though a real test of player and programmer would be the inclusion of contours and sloping greens.

If you must buy a Golf simulation for ten quid then Argus has a very pleasant game it would love to flog you.

Label: Bug Byte
Author: In-house
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

What would you do if you had a golf game called Nick Faldo Plays The Open and Nick Faldo had just won the open? That's right you'd re-release it. And that's just what Bug Byte has done putting Nick Faldo Plays The Open out at a budget price. Opportunism, sure, but it so happens that NFPTO is one of the better golf games. It ain't Leaderboard, but it ain't bad either.

The game is played over a 900-screen scrolling map based loosely on the Sandwich course. Ifs this detail plus the nice icon graphic system illustrating golfer and (sometimes abusive) caddie that makes the game. Easy to understand, nice to look at and as difficult as you want.

Criticism? Only one - when it comes to putting there is no close-up of the green around the flag and the scaling therefore makes it at least partly a matter of luck whether you finally hole the ball. Never mind. It was good at £6 or so. At £2.99 it's an absolute steal.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Mind Games
PRICE: £9.99

Fore! And Nick Faldo Plays the Open swings into action on the Royal St George's Golf Course for the 114th Open.

Using keyboard or joystick, you control a fully-animated golfer, his club choice, swing strength and direction over 900 fully-scrolling screens of this famous course.

A plan view of the course lets you see the outcome of every shot.

To help plan your next shot, a wider view of the course can be had. Or you can ask your caddy's advice. "Driver,' you demand. "Are you sure?" replies the caddy. "Yes," you say. "OK" he relents.

Power and direction of the shot are chosen by an icon-driven command system. The shot is controlled by the joystick - moving it forward and left, for example, will slice the ball to the left.

Wind, weather and deep bunkers all conspire to destroy your chances in the Open.

Nick Faldo Plays the Open is also available for the Commodore 64.

PRICE: £9.95

Icons are this year's success story. Mind Games have put them to unusual use in their latest game, Nick Faldo Plays the Open.

The screen is divided into several sections. The top shows a section of the golf course, centering on the position of your ball. Below is your range of options shown in pictorial form. Each can be selected easily.

Havin!iJ selected the hole you are to play you can flip to a larger map to check where you are going. That done you can choose the power and angle of your shot, ask your caddy for the correct golf club, and away you go.

Your caddy is an obstreperous bloke, who is stoically unimpressed by all but superhuman golf playing. What is more, he is very doubtful about handing you a club he feels to be wrong for the job.

Play is quick and easy but the graphics let the program down. When grass is represented as black dots on green it is difficult to distinguish the situation of the small black cross which represents your ball. On the green your ball becomes indistinguishable from the marker flag, making final putts unnecessarily protracted.

Produced by Mind Games, Liberty House, 222 Regent Street, London W1.

Spectrum
Argus
£9.99

Icons are all the rage these days and are well to the fore in what is probably one of the best golf simulations around.

The icons at the base of the screen allow you to choose clubs and control, force and direction of shot. You have a caddy who doesn't tell you what to do, but says things like "OK" in a little speech bubble if you're making sensible decisions. Not a golfer myself, but the accompanying booklet is informative end should appeal to learners of the ancient game.

Mind Games
£9.99

Golfing simulations are not new, many very respectable versions have been published in ZXC and other mags. So what is this program going to offer to warrant £9.95 I asked myself, apart from NF's endorsement? Three things actually, first a very accurate representation of The Royal St. George Golf Club in Sandwich where the 1985 Open Championship was held. The handbook also contains a hole by hole description and suggestions of how to attempt them.

Second is the input system which is performed completely by an icon system, this allows joystick operation and very precise direction/power selection.

And finally, the birds' eye scrolling map of the course is most impressive, not to mention the additional control when the little golfer swings at the ball which can add extra power and/or direction (including slicing) to the stroke, giving it a realistic feel, Then there are the comments and 'advice' of the caddy on your performance or choice of club.

OK, so there are lots of nifty features but does it play well and is it fun? The answer is yes, the split screen icon system works well and you can improve with practice. The first time around, my score was 121, second time 86 still plenty of time for improvement.

The manual is nicely written and produced, but as with every program of this nature there is no explanation of the merits of different clubs. For the complete ignoramus such as I, when do you use a Wood? When an Iron?

CHRIS BOURNE TAKES A NOSTALGIC TRIP THROUGH THE BATTLE-STREWN FIELDS OF LAST YEAR'S STRATEGY GAMES

Before programmers discovered sprites, 3D graphics and continuous fire buttons, strategy games were regarded as a sort of ideal computer entertainment. That was partly based on the idea that computers were essentially souped-up calculators and partly because mainframe computers were very good at games like chess.

If you were into computers when the Spectrum was launched, you'll remember titles like Football Manager, and Flight Simulation being held up as examples of the finest programs around. These days it's more likely to be Alien 8, Shadowfire or Dun Darach, and their reputation depends in great part on graphics programming.

One of the reasons for that is financial. In their wisdom, retailers and distributors tend to see strategy games as having a narrow appeal. They are the classic sleepers which sell steadily but slowly. The trade wants the money now and lots of it. That means quick-selling arcade games, preferably with some spin-off celebrity theme attached, which hits number one in the charts in a couple of weeks and stiffs out a month later.

Many of the fine strategy/simulation games, produced in 1985, saw little exposure in the shops - certainly not in the big high street chains. That does not mean they were no good. In fact, there has been something of an upsurge in the quality of strategy games recently, and most spectacularly in the field of wargames.

Wargames have as long a tradition as any sort of computer entertainment. If you've ever read the hefty instruction books for classic wargames of the past - Avalon Hill's Afrika Korps you'll understand why. Those rules tended to read like a computer program with complicated look-up tables for cross-referencing dice throws, gridded maps and strict sequences of actions within a given turn of play. They also took hours to play.

The computer is supposed to take all the argument of table-top gaming out of wargames. It quickly does all the adding up, it doesn't cheat, and it can handle secret moves easily.

Unfortunately, most wargames never turn out like that. Graphics tend to be based on unrealistic grids, the rules appear over-simple, and the computer generally takes a vast amount of time to think about the moves.

One such game, which in other respects might have deserved success, was ATRAM. The name stands for Advanced Tactical Reconnaissance and Attack Mission, which turns out to be a NATO exercise in which the RAF and USAF battle it out using Harrier jump jets. The idea neatly sidesteps the obvious problems involved in trying to flog a game based on bombing the daylights out of Port Stanley.

The game is a computer-moderated boardgame with a glossy magnetic board and stylized pieces that you slide about as if you were a real NATO general. Unfortunately, the computer part is less fun. The only excuse for the program is to handle the boring bits like keeping track of how much fuel each jet has consumed.

The author is clearly fixated on jargon, which makes the rules almost unreadable, and all moves are keyed-in in a jumble of letters and numbers. It is so easy to make a mistake that you'll never be entirely sure whether you're playing the game properly. Headbangers and retired Harrier pilots only.

A much better two-player wargame is Confrontation from Lothlorien. Confrontation is a wargame system which allows you to design your own maps and, within reason, choose the composition of your armies. That allows you to play at a tactical or strategic level. The flavour is essentially modern, with armour and mechanised infantry supported by footsloggers, artillery and air units.

To go with the system, Lothlorien has also released a set of four scenarios ranging from a fictional WWII invasion of Kent to guerilla warfare in Afghanistan and Angola. We found the Egypt-Israel scenario most interesting in that the open terrain left units extremely vulnerable without air support. The organisation of such support requires capturing and defending a chain of airstrips in order to reach Tel Aviv or Suez depending on which way you're going.

Nevertheless, Confrontation is still slow. The same cannot be said of Overlords, another two-player game from Lothlorien. Loosely based on an old boardgame favourite, Campaign, it is played across a large area of fairly basic terrain. The concept is abstract, involving footsoldiers, generals, and the Overlord. The objective is to capture strongpoints - ownership of which generates one piece per turn. The fighting is equally abstract, based on the number and strength of the pieces in contact with the enemy.

Both players play simultaneously, and the game is so fast that you'll almost certainly need joysticks - preferably one each. The pieces whizz about the screen and that leads to a magnificent confusion as both players simultaneously attempt to outflank their opponent.

By and large, it is the epic battles of WWII which command the keenest attention from programmers. Battle for Midway is a strange hybrid from PSS, and incorporates arcade sequences. The Battle of Midway was a crucial turning point in the war against Japan, when the US sent a force to smash the invasion fleet.

The PSS game falls into two parts. First, locate the course of the three arms of the Japanese forces. Having done that you must send out strike forces from your aircraft carriers to bomb them.

When battle is joined you get the chance to zap the Japs using a joystick, which rather spoils the point of a supposedly realistic wargame. The author claims it simulates the fog of war, or some such nonsense.

We found the game easy to beat - it's good to see the computer taking an active part in a solo game for once, but the graphics are primitive and not very clear. A year ago we might have had more praise, but there are better games around.

Much better, in fact, and the star of the bunch is undoubtedly Arnhem from CCS. CCS, like Lothlorien, specialises in strategy games. For years CCS games were worthy rather than exciting, and almost always written in super-slow Basic. With Arnhem the company has finally struck gold.

The game follows the thrust of the Allied armies across the Rhine against fierce German opposition. The main idea was simple enough. The British were supposed to hurtle down country roads to Arnhem while American paratroopers were dropped on the bridges ahead to hold them for the main advance.

Of course it wasn't as simple as that, and neither is the game. There are a number of levels at which you can play, until you get to the full battle. A time limit is set, and if you don't capture the bridges quickly enough you lose. The German task is therefore to hold up the advance.

The graphics are pleasant, and information about each unit's strength can be obtained by positioning the cursor. One of the best features is the movement system. You can choose to move in open or close order - open order means you are far less vulnerable to attack but cannot take proper advantage of the roads. The game can be played by up to three players - with three, one player gets the Germans and the other two play British and American forces.

The feel of the game is tremendously realistic, with the onus placed on keeping the British moving down the roads. Arnhem is absolutely recommended and will hopefully encourage other software houses to pull their socks up and match the standard.

Less attractive, but equally fast, is Lothlorien's The Bulge - the German counter-attack on Antwerp and Hitler's last great offensive in Western Europe. It was always doomed to failure, what with narrow country lanes and terrain choked in snow. The computer plays so quickly and viciously that you'll be hard put to survive.

Although The Bulge scores over Arnhem for speed, the graphics are less clear and the strategy less easy to fathom. Lothlorien has opted for simultaneous movement, and one is frequently reduced to hurling forces willy-nilly into the fray without much regard for tactics.

A pleasing feature of both Arnhem and The Bulge is that you can issue general orders to units which they will continue to obey until you change them. That is a sensible and much more realistic alternative and saves having to move fifty pieces every turn, slowing the whole flow of play.

Moving away from wargames, another category of great antiquity in computer circles is what is known as the land-management game. An early example of the genre was Hamurabi which puts you in charge of an ancient kingdom. You are head of a population, and there is corn in the treasury.

The idea is to manage the economy - based entirely on corn - so that everybody gets enough to eat. There is enough corn to sow for next year with some in reserve in case of natural disaster.

Of course, the way the game is set up at the beginning, there is never enough, so you get to make decisions about how many people to starve to death for the greater good of the rest, and so on.

Such games are very easy to construct on computers, and if you want to write your own strategy game we suggest you try something along those lines. The secret is to construct a set of formulae governing the relationship between various factors - for example, how much food do people need? How many people are needed to sow an acre of land? How much corn?

There are very few business-type activities that cannot be simulated in that sort of way. Two famous games of this type are Football Manager from Addictive Games and Mugsy from Melbourne House, in which you play a gangster trying to run rackets with the aid of a none too loyal gang.

Sadly, Kevin Toms - Mr Football Manager himself - has not managed to follow that enormous success.

Addictive has brought out a number of games along similar lines in 1985, but none of them match the old classic.

Software Superstar casts you as a producer of games. You have to allocate time and money each month to releasing games, programming, advertising and the like. Nice touches include the decision to hype games or be honest about them, but the overall impression is dull, and we found it easy to get a hit program and reach the targets set.

Grand Prix Manager from the same outfit was equally tedious, with poor graphics to boot. Luckily CRL brought out the infinitely more entertaining Formula One - a Sinclair User classic - which we found totally compulsive.

Formula One is a full simulation of a grand prix season. Start off by hiring drivers and building cars - you have a million quid or so but it goes very fast. When the race starts choose your tyres and then watch the cars whizz past in convincing graphics. Messages inform you of the state of the track and incidents involving other cars, while a leader board keeps you in touch with the race positions.

Best of all, you can call pit stops for tyre changes, and the correct choice of timing may win or lose a race. The pit stop sequence is arcade based, and you have to manoeuvre a mechanic around the four wheels to complete it. Purists may have their doubts, but the speed of movement is linked to the amount of money you invested in the crew, and does not therefore make a mockery of the strategic element.

Formula One is a good game against the computer, but becomes really exciting when played with friends.

Almost as enthralling, although less well presented and rather more anarchic in play is The Biz, a simulation of the record industry from Virgin Games. You begin by choosing your social class - from stinking rich to unemployed - and then form a band. Hire a manager, go on the pub or college circuit and send endless demo tapes to bored record companies. If you have the money, you can cut your own discs, but beware - without the clout of the big boys behind you it may all go to nothing. The ultimate goal is, of course, to get a number one, but the road is full of pitfalls.

The game is full of subtle humour - you may reckon a dry ice machine is just right for your tacky rock band, but watch your credibility plummet. You may even get a chance to sample drugs during the game. Try it and see where it gets you.

On then to simulation proper, by which is meant those worthy and sometimes addictive attempts to portray accurately a real-life experience. The original impetus comes from the flight simulators used by airlines to train pilots, and for some time software houses only seemed to be interested in mimicking those.

They all look more or less the same, with an array of instruments on the lower half of the screen and a view of the horizon with occasional crude landmarks. Some are better than others for speed and ease of use, and the best are still Psion's antique classic, Flight Simulation and Digital integration's Fighter Pilot, which is rather more difficult but does allow for aerial dogfights.

DACC specialises in those features, and recently brought out 747 Flight Simulator. We've taken a bit of stick at Sinclair User for giving it the thumbs down, but I still maintain it's an unexciting production, mainly because the Jumbo jet isn't a patch on a light aircraft for aerobatics.

Real enthusiasts will probably enjoy it, it is certainly a worthy and apparently highly accurate program. If you're looking for entertainment, though, try elsewhere.

You might try looking at Southern Belle from Hewson. The program simulates the old Pullman service from London to Brighton, and you have to handle the great steam engine all the way.

Initial levels involve handling only one or two controls while the computer does the rest, but you work up to a full schedule with stops, signals, hazards on the track, brakes and handling gradients, to name a few.

It is a surprisingly fulfilling program, and the wire-frame graphics of recognisable landmarks along the track are well executed. You are marked at the end according to your accuracy on the schedule and how economically you conserved fuel.

Another unusual simulation is Juggernaut from CRL, in which you have to drive a container truck around town picking up cargoes. The screen shows an overhead view of the lorry and road, with traffic lights, status, steering and gears. The movement is slow and there are no other vehicles around - presumably you're driving in the middle of the night, council bye-laws notwithstanding. The irrepressible John Gilbert reckons the lorry looks like a Gillette GII razor. He's quite right, and although Juggernaut isn't a bad idea, the end result is rather dull.

Finally, a look at a few odds and ends which don't really fit any categories. One such Minder, a much-hyped trading game based on the famous television series.

You play Arthur Daley, the dodgy entrepreneur, and the idea is to buy and sell an incredible range of weird goods such as gold acupuncture needles while steering clear of the law in the form of mean inspector Chisholm.

You do that by seeking out dealers and wide boys, either at their warehouses or in the Winchester Club. Terry, as ever, gets to do the fetching and carrying, and can also be hired to mind you - an important function when dealers discover goods are stolen.

In essence the game is simply trading, with a large text interpreter enabling you to bargain with characters in authentic Daley cockney - it understands words like bent, or pony. Once you get into it there's rather more strategy involved. You have to organise Terry's time so goods get collected and delivered on schedule, while you need sufficient cash to pay for the next lot.

Minder is a pleasant romp and deserved to do better in the charts than it did, but would have benefited from a greater variety of incidents. Memory taken up with slang during the bargaining is fun at first but since it is really only window dressing it leaves you with the feeling that the game lacks depth.

Alien on the other hand, from Argus, has plenty of depth but is difficult to get into. It follows the tense cult movie in which a devastating alien invades a spaceship and proceeds to exterminate the crew.

The game uses menus to pick characters, objects and locations in the spaceship Nostromo, while plans of the decks indicate your position. The idea is to destroy the alien either in a straight fight - fat chance - or by escaping from the ship and blowing it up by remote control.

You only see the alien when you are in control of a character in the same room. The rest of the time you can hear it as doors and ventilation grilles slide open, or your scanner picks up the presence of a living creature nearby. That makes for tremendous tension in the play, and the one drawback is the simplicity of the graphics which works against the otherwise strong illusion of involvement. Fans of the film will enjoy it. Others may find it tough going.

We have made no mention of some of the plethora of spin-off titles in the sports arena which might come under the umbrella of simulations. Those are generally disappointing, especially in comparison with the arcade based sports games. Two, which play quite well, are Steve Davis' Snooker and American Football from Argus - which has the added virtue of not involving a famous personality. Nick Faldo's Open is a lovingly programmed simulation of the course at Sandwhich which suffers from one horrible flaw. The closer your ball is to the flag on the green, the more difficult it is to judge the angle at which you should strike it. In fact, the reverse should happen.

It is heartening to see arcade games taking on more elements of strategy in their play. Arcade-adventures such as Knight Lore or Gyron - if you can categorise those masterpieces at all - have as much to do with logical thought and planning as they do with swift reactions. That argues a growing maturity, both among games publishers and also in public taste, as computer owners look for more than a quick joystick fix from their hobby.