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Funny how life imitates art. Just as the US Navy put the giant World War II battlewagon New Jersey back in commission and sent it to lurk menacingly off the coast of Lebanon, several software companies obviously decided that there's mileage in resuscitating this obsolescent - but fascinating - form of naval warfare, where gun-armed ironclads seek each other out on the high seas and, having found each other, do their best to blow their opponents out of the water.

But MC Lothlorien (Dreadnoughts) and new Rye-based company Temptation (Admiral Graf Spee) have elected to simulate actual eras of battleship warfare. The first goes for that most fascinating of epochs, the 1914-18 war, when mighty fleets hunted each other over the wintry North Sea. Temptation's offering reproduces the last cruise of the pocket battleship "Graf Spee".

Both have 'search' modes, with Dreadnoughts allocating you a pre-set plotline and Graf Spee allowing you to hunt the oceans rather like the Thorn-EMI game Submarine Commander. Of the two, the Lothlorien search mode is the more realistic, since it exactly reproduces the confusion and poor visibility for which that era of naval warfare was noted. However, Dreadnoughts is fairly dull to look at, consisting essentially of menus and, I have to say it, spreadsheets (!) whereby you alter individual vessels' speed and heading.

Dreadnoughts eventually gives you a 'look-down' (Zeppelin?) view, whereas the Temps opt for a bridge view. Combat sequences therefore are tokenised on Dreadnoughts and - because of the Basic programming - tacky and wooden on Graf Spee. The best thing about either game is the capability of Dreadnoughts to allow two players to alternate on the same console, so that what each player sees (the other guy politely staring at the wall meantime) is exactly what the admiral would see.

Of the two, Dreadnoughts is the more authentic overall and more visually boring; while Graf Spee is precisely the other way around. Neither address the contemporary problem of range-finding in any way. Overall, I feel the ultimate naval wargame has yet to come.