Over the past few months, CRASH has tended to neglect the cheaper end of the software market - the ninety-niners - in favour of critical comment on all the full-price games. So in an effort to cover every single piece of software available for your Spectrum, CRASH has decided to introduce a new section, devoted entirely to budget software (games up to £5.00 in price); Budget Bureau. Each month, we'll pick out and feature our favourite cheapies, anything with 80%+ will receive a CRASH House Hit award! Each game still has its own overall rating (in brackets), so there shouldn't be a problem choosing the best games to buy. Only Blackbeard gets a House Hit this month. Read on, read on...

Code Masters' latest simulator attempts to bring the teeth-smashing sport of rugby to the Spectrum. International Rugby Simulator (68%) features a league of eight teams (any of them computer-controlled) competing for the championship. Matches are portrayed in Match Day-style 3-D. The player controls one player at a time: running, passing and kicking. Scrummages and line-outs are also featured for added realism. Graphics are simple stick-men but David Whittaker's title tune is good. Rugby is a difficult sport to simulate in a computer game, but this is a brave attempt which offers a fair amount of playability for rugger fans.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Yes it's Marcus Berkmann again, rootling around in the lucky dip for all the latest cheapoid games. And what did he pull out? A bunch of bargains no less!

Code Masters
£1.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

"This is it the truly definitive rugby game," says the blurb, when what they really mean is "the only rugby game on the market". Still, times are tough in Darlingland, as they must be slowly but surely running out of things to simulate. Duncan's offered them a controlling interest in Gardensoft, but no dice. (Advanced Dice Simulator? There's an idea.) Meanwhile, it's off to Twickenham, although suspicions are immediately raised when you see that the puff on the back ("An amazing mixture of strategy and fast action... absolutely brilliant!") is not from one of the mags but comes courtesy of one David Darling. In the end though, this actually is quite a good rugby game, using many of the tricks leamt by Jon Ritman on Match Days 1 and 2. It's easy to control, and many of its features, like scrums and throwins, are handled very impressively. If you've been waiting years for a decent rugby sim you'll love it - as for the wider market. I'm not sure, but I (who hate rugby) thoroughly enjoyed it.