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On your marks, get set, *go*! Daley Thompson, Olympic gold medallist and Lucozade drinker, leaves the blocks, the reassuring thud of his spikes pounding the track. But this isn't the Olympic Games - it's the new sports simulation from Ocean, probably their best game to date.

Once the game has loaded - using a suberbly colourful and musical turbo-loading sequence - blue shorts and white running vest, waiting anxiously for the ten muscle-straining events to begin. All 4 track events involve mercilessly rattling the joystick from left to right to increase Daley's speed.

In the track events Daley runs against an opponent. Is it Jurgen Hingsen? Well, even if it isn't, Daley is given a very tough run for those medal-winning points.

The field events require you to press the fire button at the optimum moment. For example, in the discus, javelin, long jump and shotput, you must do so when Daley is as close to 45 degrees from the ground as possible.

The pole vault and high jump are similar in many respects, both events needing several presses of the fire button at key moments. In the field events, timing and speed are crucial and mastery of both are vital for success.

To add atmosphere, there are various ad hoardings alongside the track with genuine adverts on them. Above the track and field sit the crowd, who applaud madly whenever Daley does well. However this is about the only sound except for the sporty tune played in the loading sequence.

If you buy this game you'll want to enter Daley in competition after competition. It's not quite as good as Activision's Decathlon, but it's £2 cheaper.

It's almost an exact copy of the arcade original, exccept instead of hitting two keys you must waggle your joystick, and probably cause it terrible damage, not to mention what it does to your hands!

One of the most annoying things is the ease of breaking the world record for the shot-put. However bad your throw is, it almost always is a world record! The opposite occurs with the javelin, where it is almost impossible to even qualify.

The graphics are very good, and the music entertaining. This is a very addictive game.

On the whole I preferred the field events, the pole vault especially. The 100 metre and 100 metre hurdles were okay but let's face it, waggling a joystick for 400 metres is simply boring, and as for the 1,500...!

The figures are well animated, though a little small, and I thought the advertisement boards were a nice touch. The fanfare and introductory jingles added realism, but other than that, I was unimpressed by the sound.

Overall, I got the impression of a good program spoilt by lack of attention to detail.