It's Christmas soon, time for good cheer, goodwill to all men, and dozens of compilations based on all the games that have been released over the last eighteen months. Virgin kick off with the third in their "Now Games" series with a tape of five extremely good games for the Amstrad.

Nick Faldo Plays The Open is a mid-quality game of the golf type that, whilst not as good as Leader Board or Golf Construction Set, is still one of the better types of golf game. Set in the Royal St. George's golf club in Sandwich, Kent, the game captures most of the action and feeling of playing a round of golf. When I first reviewed this game I liked it, and I still like it now.

Sorcery needs no introduction to Amstrad owners, being one of the most colourful, challenging and well presented games ever to be written for the machine. An 'arcade adventure', you play a sorcerer that must destroy the evil of the Necromancer and ensure that good triumphs over evil. Even if all the other games on this tape were rubbish (which they aren't) the tape would be worth the price just for this game.

Codename Mat II was the quietly released sequel to the Micromega game Codename Mat (Surprise, surprise!). As Micromega pulled out of the software world, Domark took up the sequel. Based on the Star Trek games of yore, Mat II puts you in a spaceship with a variety of weapons and detector systems. By juggling these around you should be able to protect the satellites of the planet, Vesta with their valuable Karillium mines from the evil Myon hordes. When it first came out, this game wasn't promoted very well and so didn't do as well as it should have. With luck it should have a new lease of life.

Everyone's A Wally refers to a game featuring Wally Week, rather than the staff of MikroGen. However, when Computer Gamer had a darts match with them, I'm not so sure... (NB. We won 9-8). The game is a multi-screen arcade adventure with large colourful graphics. In the game you switch between the various members of your gang in an attempt to get everything done and get some wages. A very popular game when it came out.

The final game takes up the whole of the second side of the tape. Domark's A View To A Kill is three games based in one. Based on the film of the same name, the first game is a map making/arcade adventure sort of game where you have to prevent the explosion of Silicon Valley by the evil Max Zorin. To do this, you must wander around a mine and solve certain puzzles to be able to defuse the bomb.

The second game is based in San Francisco. In this game, Max Zorin has locked you and your companion in a lift and then set fire to the building - your job is to get out. The third game is based around the Paris chase, where the assassin who attempted to kill Bond dashes away. You have to catch her.

Compilations are extremely hard to beat on value, even £2 budget software can't compete as these games were originally full-priced games and are now being sold on a tape with an average price of £2 each. Most readers will have at least one of these games, but they are all classics in their own right and there is enough of a mixture here to provide enjoyment for any games player (or not even a games player) and for the parent who doesn't know what to get their son for Christmas, then this is a safe bet.