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You are given £1,000 which you must bet on up to six horses to try to bust the bookies. The computer gives you named horses and their odds, and you may put up to £999 on each one. You then see the six horses raced across the screen.

The graphics in Horse Race are superb - the animals are drawn in detail and their movement depicted correctly. You can see their tails move, and all the detail on the jockeys. Two stands are displayed and a commentary board shows which horses have been et on and which one is in the lead. The game displays people near the ropes waving, flags flapping on the stands, and a very detailed camera car driving alongside the runners.

The sound too is superb. It plays a different tune while loading, before betting, and before and after each race. You can even hear the hooves of the horses and the thud of jockeys falling off.

You select a game for between one and six players, and the number of races to be run. There's no sound on or off option, but surely nobody would want to turn off such good sound effects.

Horse Race is user-friendly and supplied with excellent instructions.

It's repetitive in that it's the same thing every race, only the names and odds change, and it's also boring playing by yourself because there's no skill to it: you place your bet, sit back and the computer does the rest.

When playing with many people, though, it can become quite exciting.

Ian Brettell