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Well, why not? We've had Winter Games and Summer Games, Olympiads and Decathlons, so why not try and inject a little originality into an old format, and have Circus Games? That's what Tynesoft has attempted, a novel slant on the old stop-start-rewind-reload type of games.

In Circus Games, you'll find yourself trying to work your way through four events, attempting various tricks at each, in a bid to get onto the high score screen. Why should you want to?

The first event is the Bengal tiger training (wooh), where you, the trainer, armed with nothing but a chair and a whip, must put three tigers through their routine, and avoid being eaten for lunch. There are four tricks to complete: persuade the striped terrors to lie down, walk through a tube and sit down in a line. But how does it play? Not very well actually. I eventually got bored and went onto the next section: the trapeze.

Here I found myself got up in a girlie leotard thingy, having to perform yet more death defying feats. The actual animation of this event was again the most attractive aspect, but the speed with which each trick was accomplished is very slow, and hardly got the adrenalin going. If you have insomnia, however...

The penultimate event was the tightrope, and guess what you had to do here? Got it in one. Cross the high wire, performing a somersault in the middle, then cross it on a unicycle. and lastly cross it performing a flip in the middle. About the only one of the events which had you continually prodding at your joystick in order to keep balanced whilst moving slowly forward and backward, and as such, the most exciting event. This isn't saying very much, however.

And what about the grand finale of the night's gripping performance, "ladeez han gennelmen"? Yes, it was the stunning 'girl doing things on horseback' routine. This is the most unplayable event, which is indeed an achievement considering the strong competition from the others.

Presenting a list of the aspects which make this game so bad would be boring, but no sound on the playing sections and totally unfriendly multi-load systems should give you an idea of what to expect. Tynesoft is, if my knowledge serves me, a software house more used to putting products out for the BBC and suchlike computers, only occasionally making a foray into the Speccy market. On the showing of Circus Games, I think this is something we should all be grateful for.

Just like the real circuses on television. Boring.