Go for gold

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As so many athletes boycotted this year's Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh you have been given the opportunity to enter eight of the events.

Have you got what it takes to compete with the world's greatest athletes? The eight events are stored on one side of a cassette and must be loaded in strict sequence - there is no menu allowing you to load individual events.

You compete in hammer throwing, swimming, cycling, 400 metres, long jump, steeplechase, rowing and weight lifting. Pressing the Z and X keys alternately determines power or speed, while the,Spacebar initiates a throw. The graphics are drawn on the grand scale - none of these weedy little stick men running around.

In the hammer throwing you only see the top half of the athlete as he turns in the circle. After his third turn a meter displaying an angle bursts into life. Hit the Spacebar when it reaches the angle you desire and away soars the hammer to an incredible distance - of about 5 metres in my case.

The cycling is another graphically pleasing and original event. The action takes place in three separate screen windows, the top displaying a plan of the circuit and indicating your position.

The next one provides a sideways view of you on the bike, and the third a head-on view. Great care must be taken not to enter the bends too quickly or you'll find yourself rolling down the track ahead of the bike.

In the events which are completed quickly, such as the hammer, the ability to re-run would have been helpful.

Likewise with the long boring events such as the 400 metres. It would have been nice to have had an abort key which allowed you to skip one or two of the heats if you so wished.

Commonwealth Games is a fine example of an athletics program but could have been even better with a little more forethought.

Steve Brook