It's a funny old game

Many game conversions fail to hit their goal but this game is excellent - though there's one thing to watch when you start.

To prevent the DeskTop from grabbing valuable memory, Arcade Soccer must be booted with Shift-Break - if you double click its icon all you get is the title screen then the system crashes.

Pressing the spacebar takes you to the main menu screen which is crammed with small but descriptive icons. All the options available in the original 8-bit version are there - Cup, Championship or Friendly matches, goalie skill level control, slow/fast game, control of length of play, play against micro, use keyboard or joystick and soon.

But there's much more: Weather control - choose between sunny, rainy, showers with thunder and lightning, continuous heavy rain with thunder and lightning - this affects how far player slides in a tackle and whether he spins out of control after it.

Then there's general play formation, either 4-3-3, 3-4-3 or 3-3-4 and minimum kick distance. When you kick a ball the strength depends on how long you've held the kick key depressed.

There's a setting which monitors the maximum amount of swerve you can intro duce when kicking the ball. On the main screen you can get a view of the whole pitch in the top left corner showing the positions of all the players, you can specify how big you want it or remove it altogether - I found this helpful when taking goal kicks and throwing in from the line.

All the players run at the same speed except the one with the ball, who is slower. You can toggle an option to make him travel at the same speed as the others, but I found this gave a less realistic effect.

One of the best effects of the whole game is the replay when a goal is scored. You get a fast rewind in black and white - with the screen displaying a flashing REW symbol just like a video machine then you get PLAY with the goal being scored again slightly slower than before. You can opt for a quick replay, a longer one or none at all.

Two other icons let you modify playing speed - I didn't find Fast particularly hard tocope with - and you can change the pattern on the ball.

Once you've set up your ideal playing conditions you move to the games them selves. Playing a friendly is the best way to get started and if you really want to be sure you're not going to lose set the options for two player - and just play one!

Once you get on to the playing screen more options become available: You can alter the colour of the pitch and, to compensate, the map. Press f5 and f6 simultaneously you can quit the game.

The only thing that separates this from the highly polished 16 bit games are the various screens before a match, at half time and after: These are awful and look as if they have been carried direct from the 8 bit micro.

The ability to have 24 players is still available and you can save the World Cup state to disc to play again later. Plus the option to use the Voltmace joystick.

So what's it like to play? Excellent. I'm not a real soccer buff, but I thoroughly enjoyed playing this desktop version - even more than the 8-bit one.

The micro-controlled players behave in an amazingly realistic manner following up shoots by "unintentionally" barging the goalie - occasionally having the desired effect ofpushing theball over the line.

The movement is much smoother and, on the whole responsive to the point where I found it possible to win against the micro even when the goalies had equally matched skills.

Teri Paul