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Once upon a time, a video game console took up a whole table's worth of space and played an average game of squash with a little white ball and a bat that moved only up or down. Now, your little microcomputer can utterly humiliate you with an animated three-dimensional squash simulation.

The game presents you with a view from the rear of the court, and two nicely animated figures, either of which can be controlled by the computer or a player. Keyboard controls are user-definable, and the game offers four skill levels - though even on the lowest I suffered many a dismal drubbing.

Though your animated player responds well to the controls, I found it very hard to figure out how to place him properly and keep the ball in play, yet this never really became frustrating. In fact, it made me want to keep on trying and master the skill - to no avail so far. Still, nil desperandum and all that.

I'm not a great fan of sports simulations, but this game turned out to be much more enjoyable and addictive than I had expected. The only let-down is the Reprosound voice synthesis which is meant to announce the scores. It simply sounds like a high pitched BEEP, and amplifying it through a tape recorder just gives you a loud, high pitched BEEP, and amplifying it through a tape recorder just gives you a loud, high pitched BEEP, which is so negligible that I Slopped noticing it after a while.

K.C.