Producer: Alligata
Retail Price: £9.95
Author: Richard Stevenson

Pub games seem to be dying out in nowadays - fruit machines and pints of extremely fizzy lager seem to be more popular forms of entertainment. But now, courtesy of AWOATA, there's the chance to resuscitate some of these age old games in the comfort of your home. This compilation pack is designed to be played by two players, starting from side one and working through all seven games. There's also a practice option to help you get into the swing of things.

The first event is darts, in which both players try to work their way down to zero from either 301 or 501 in the best of three games. Three darts are provided, and a little character on the left of the boards throws with a press of the space bar once you've aligned the dart to your satisfaction, moving up, down, left and right. Just to make things a little bit harder the computer has a spot of the shakes, so perfect timing is necessary to 154 CRASH November 1986 get an accurate shot.

Next, comes bar billiards. This is played with eight balls on a special table with holes in the surface. The object is to score as many points as possible by potting the balls, avoiding penalty mushrooms situated at inconvenient points around the table. There are seven white balls and one red. Each hole has a different points value when a ball falls into it and the red ball doubles that value.

A foul is recorded if you fail to hit a ball or accidentally knock over a white mushroom or if any ball returns over the baulk line. Knocking over the black mushroom reduces your score in the game to zero. You have ten minutes of play after which potted balls are not returned to you.

Dominoes is next with both players trying to get rid of all of their dominoes by adding them to the dommies on the 'table' according to the usual rules - best of three games again.

The second side of the cassette contains table football, pontoon and poker. In table football you we presented with a plan view of a football table with the opposing sides represented by their appropriate colours. Just like real table football, the players can be moved from side to side. Pressing the FIRE key kicks the ball. Only nine balls are provided per game, so the first player to score five goals wins.

In Pontoon, the aim is to get a hand of cards with a combined face value of twenty-one, or as close to twenty-one as possible. Starting with two cards which you can twist (have an other card given to you which the other player sees), buy (get another card which only you see) or stick (keep the cards you already have). You can 'bum' an entire hand after the deal - hand it in and get a new set of cards. Ten hands are played, and the overall winner gets to pocket the whole kitty.

After a game of Pontoon what could be better than a spicy game of poker? Keys 1 through to 5 control the five cards dealt and these can be thrown away or kept depending on how good the hand is. Usual poker rules apply, as detailed in the inlay.
Skittles is the Sinai challenge: after lining up your ball, pressing a key sends it racing down the ally, hopefully resulting in a strike. There are ten bowls per game and five separate games in all.

COMMENTS

Control keys: different for each game
Joystick: keyboard only
Keyboard play: good
Use of colour: attractive
Graphics: straightforward
Sound: none
Skill revels: one
Screens: seven

What a lovely idea this is! Sadly, ALLIGATA seemed to have missed out the most important bit of going down the pub - but they probably ran out of space at the end of the tape! On the whole, this is presented quite well with graphics of a fairly high quality used throughout, a few well placed spot effects, and even the occasional tune. The seven events are quite good fun to play, although I can't really see them keeping me occupied for very long. Generally this isn't a bed set of games for the asking price, but I didn't find them all that compelling.

Pub Games is a very good compilation. Each of the games is a very definite individual game, quite different from the rest. l doubt that reviewing them separately, I'd give them all more than 70% apiece. But in the compilation, they all join up to give a real nights entertainment. My only major complaint is that there is no quit option to allow you to leave one game and go onto the next in the full pub run. Pub Games has a lot to it, and if you're into the simple, but not too easy sort of games, then this might just be what you're looking for.

ALLIGATA have really put their minds to this one and come up with a first class simulation. All of the games are very well done, and contain a decent mixture of graphics and fun, adding up to the perfect pub package. Every game is faithfully reproduced and great fun can be had if you get a decent enough opponent. Some may frown on the idea of a two-player game only, but I don't think a one player game would have been much fun. I didn't find the multiload a problem, as you can load each game individually - you just don't get your scores carried across from the last game. All in all, I found Pub Games great fun to play and well worth the asking price.

Alligata
£9.95

Honest hofficer, (hic!) ish like thish (prar-ar-p), I've been researching the background to Alligata's new Pub Games. You don't know the hell I've been through (brudd-dup). I've had to check the accu-, accura-, - make sure they're like the real thing.

See, Alligata has got all these games on the one tape, - I don't mean toff wine bar games like wet t-shirt compos and get the top off Grolsch bottles, but classic Brit games like what you'd play down the Rovers or Queen Vic - darts, bar billiards, dominoes, table footie, pontoon, poker and skittles. You can play them as individual games or run your total together for an aggregate score measured in pounds (green drinking vouchers to you, tosh). You can play on your tod, or with muckers, (though it don't say nothing about bears), repeatedly on practice mode or in full competition. Ish great! (Brr-pppp).

The darts is 501 straight start, best of three, (d'you really spell Oche like that?) it's easy enough to move yer arrer over the target, but there's a built-in wobble (bit like in my legs) which means more than a little skill is required. The bar billiards is brill - you have to adjust your cue ball position, cue angle and power to make a decent break, and just like in the real thing, the bar drops after ten minutes. (but it never closes. Geddit? Oh, never mind).

The dominoes is boring (that's my theory) but you can cheat like hell, which livens it up a bit. The table footie is a high speed reaction and reflex game. (Don Howe just wouldn't understand) where the secret is all in the wrist action. Them guys wiv the waistcoats on and aces up their holes, should enjoy the pontoon and poker. My mate Robbie B. says the pontoon is unbelievably accurate, with stakes kept to a fiver so you can keep enough for when you're next in the chair. The poker's a bit bland (and some of the hands keep repeating themselves, just like me) with no chance of betting, but then the high odds hands come up pretty frequently so that adds to the glam.

An' it's all wrapped up by skittles which is a bit of a come down after the others - you just line the ball up and let it go. The pins fall down more often than me. It don't 'alf make you jump 'cos out of the blue some bloke shouts 'Strike!'. It's a shame actually, 'cos that's about all this game lacks - decent sound effects. That, and soup in a basket.

Accompany you to the station offisher! I do not require a train. Can't I stay here with my head against this nice cosy kerb. Please?

Label: Alligata
Author: In House
Price: £9.95
Joystick: Kempston
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Oh well, it's an interesting concept. Pub Games is a tape comprising all those pursuits you love to play in between the lager and crisps.

Very young people will just have to imagine what the lager and crisps are like. In fact, I'm not sure I can remember - anyone want to buy a round? Alligata, it turns out, has put quite a lot of programming effort into Pub Games and the outcome is a reasonably entertaining, if bizarre package.

Some of the games on the tape are old computer favourites flike Darts. First seen a million years ago on the Atari, I remember. It's not bad. Line up a cross on the dart board - made difficult because it is jiggling about (too many lagers probably). Then a man in the left side of the screen chucks the dart. Only one complaint - the guy doesn't have an enormous stomach - unrealistic.

Dominoes is unusual, possibly unique on a micro.

Table Football is even more bizarre, it recreates the authentic play of table football very accurately - you need two players - I found it incredibly difficult to play, you have to zoom back and forth along the lines of men and mix 'pull back'shots with an immediately following 'kick'shot. When two people are both trying to do this both using the keyboard it gets finger twisting to say the least.

Both Poker and Pontoon are pretty much your standard budget fodder, both play well enough, with quite nicely detailed displays on the cards.

Last on the tape is Skittles. Not tremendously exciting.

There is only the one key to worry about. The ball waggled about in front of the usual layout of skittles. Press any key and off it goes. I haven't knocked them all down yet but there's a limit to how long I'm prepared to keep trying.

Pub Games gets a whishy washy SDP sort of not badish kind of rating. I think you might want to play the darts for a while, maybe the dominoes, and the card games are definitely worth something.

MACHINE: Spectrum/64
SUPPLIER: Alligata
PRICE: £9.95
VERSIONS REVIEWED: Spectrum/64

At last it can be revealed! The venue for the 1992 Olympics isn't going to be Birmingham, London or even Edinburgh. The major sporting event of the decade is going to be held in the Dog and Nightgown, near Nether Wallop. And you can forget all this Decathlon business - all the participants will be playing skittles, darts, dominoes and the odd game of cards.

OK, maybe not. But you can take part in the pub Olympics thanks to Alligata. All the games you used to play before they put a Space Invaders machine where the Bar Billiards table used to be. Ironic 'aint it? Here you are playing games on computer that have been pushed out of pubs by video-games.

You get seven games in the package - darts, dominoes, poker, pontoon, skittles, table football (my favourite) and good old bar billiards.

Graphics vary considerably in style and design from version to version as does the screen layout - but both packages have similar playability.

The 64 version has a neat multi-load on tape. You can choose to play all the events in sequence or practice one at a time. The program prompts you once the menu has loaded and if you pick just one event the tape winds on to the correct place and a further prompt appears.

The Spectrum version simply skips code you don't want to load in - so it's a good idea to make notes of the tape counter readings unless you want to wait around for ages.

For my money the "action" games like football, skittles and darts are the best. The program plays a good hand of Poker and Pontoon but cards on computer just aren't the same as the real thing, are they? Dominoes is good - especially on the 64. It's a much neglected game and fun to play. Playing on the computer means you don't have to bother about shuffling all the bits up after a game or worry about losing them under the table!

The Spectrum version of Darts wins out over the 64 simply because of the extras it has on screen. Extras like a little window which tells you what you need to score to win, a running score for each player and a nice graphic representation of a darts player in one of those silly shirts they all wear.

Both versions of the game have the irritating "hit wire" feature which takes an age to finish and disrupts the game more than when it happens in real life.

64 versions of skittles - which looks more like ten-pin bowling to me - and bar billiards have forced perspective "3D" graphics while the Spectrum has plan views of both.

Table football is the best of the collection to my mind - it's fast and addictive. Like the real thing - except you can't really perform those flashy flicks of the wrist on a joystick...

Bar Billiards is fun on both machines - and if you enjoy this on computer you should try the proper game. Better than pool in my book.

Skittles is quite challenging but the controls are a bit tricky to master at first on the 64 version.

Overall a value for money package from Alligata - a good one to find in your Christmas stocking. The lastability of some of the games included could be a bit suspect. But the mixture of these old classics on one user-friendly tape is an intoxicating cocktail.

Alligata
£9.95

Presented in a jokey manner with a cartoon style insert and opening page this tape contains seven very reasonable games of the type found in many of our traditional drinking establishments.

The program begins by asking for the names of the two players and if you want to play a complete competition set of all games or separate games in practice mode.

The games are Darts, Bar Billiards, Dominoes, Table Football, Pontoon, Poker and Skittles. I will just mention here that although it is called skittles the game presented is actually ten pin bowling, quite a different thing as real players will tell you.

Each game consists of a predetermined number of goes, for instance in Pontoon each player has ten games against the bank, other games you play against each other. Money is the measure of your success and it is nice that the limits mean that you can only end up with a reasonable amount at the end. I find it difficult to believe in games where you end up with money in fantastic amounts.

Each game loads in separately and they are contained on the two sides of a long cassette tape, rather like the Sporting Events games this means that there are several 4/5 minute periods when you have to wait for the next section to lead. Some of the games were less interesting than others but this comes down to personal taste, it would have been nice if you could have had the option to select those you wanted to play from the start rather than have to play them all.

I can remember a program to play Darts alone which cost about £5, so all in all, if you enjoy this type of computer games simulation then it is good value for money.