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Licensed from the Konami arcade game, Hypersports features swimming, skeet shooting, jumping the horse, archery, triple jump and weight lifting. It's one of those games joystick manufacturers love - you can easily wreck yours! - and different models make for different scores.

As this is the Spectrum version there are no multi-coloured sprites, but they are beautifully animated - smooth, and no flickers. Backgrounds scroll at different rates and sound is provided. In fact, the whole thing is very well done, though not perhaps of the highest technical standard. There's no attempt at reality - it's more like a cartoon.

To start swimming you press the fire button at the gun (no cheating) then left and right like fury to move the arms of your swimmer, pressing the fire button when breathing is called for. If you can't meet the qualifying time, you won't get through to shooting, where you use left and right to fire when the target clay is in your cursor. Again, you must reach the target score to go on to jumping. Press the fire button to start running, and then you reach the springboard and the horse. Then spin using left and right. I'd like to tell you about the rest, but I'm not good enough to qualify yet!

My joystick was literally hot, and I wore the skin off a finger swimming - a new world record! Well executed, and for me, highly addictive. But I *can't* get the hang of the jumping. Still, next time...

D.M.