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Here's another sporting simulation designed to test your skills in five events, this time at a budget price. Weight lifting, canoeing, the 200 metre sprint, shooting and discus throwing all feature, and what's more you don ' t need any fancy equipment or months of pre-season training to compete.

At the start of the game three lives are supplied, and a life is lost each time the player fails to qualify in an event. After each event the scoreboard appears on screen, updating the points won and number of lives remaining, and at the end of a circuit round the five events, a high score table monitors performance and medals won.

This pentathlon commences with weight lifting, and a well timed press of the O key is needed to build up enough strength to heave the weights off the ground. A hand on the power clock at the top of the screen whizzes round and has to be stopped at the 'noon' position for maximum power. If a lift is successful, you keep going until the qualifying weight is reached. Failure costs a life and a smug helicopter flies past with a banner that reads "rubbish".

To get through the canoeing event the O and P keys are used to manoeuvre a kayak down a slalom of boulders which poke out from beneath the water. A meter at the bottom of screen shows how much of the course is left to get through, and contact with a boulder results in failure.

The 200 metre sprint has your runner scooting along a seemingly never-ending track. Speed and distance bars show how the race is going, and the power clock method is used again, this time to build up speed misjudge the timing of the prod on the 0 key and speed is lost, but get it right and the runner accelerates. At the end of a race the qualifying time and actual time taken are shown, and the rude helicopter pilot flies past if you fail...

Skeet shooting puts the player in control of a cross hair sight and the idea is to blast the qualifying number of skeets out of the air. Little meters at the bottom of the screen reveal how many skeets are yet to be released and the number of shots remaining. Skeets whizz into the air, launched alternately from a position behind trees on either side of the screen. As usual, the chopper pilot is waiting to the wings to mock....

The fifth event, the discus, involves two little power clocks one has to be stopped dead on 'noon ' with the A key to determine the angle of the throw, and another stopped with the Q key to determine the power behind the throw. And yes, the pilot's waiting!

Control keys: Q, A, O, P, SPACE: varies from event to event
Joystick: not applicable
Keyboard play: not always an accurate response
Use of colour lots of it; a bit garish
Graphics: nothing special
Sound: BEEPy spot effects
Skill levels: gets progressively harder
Screens: five one-screen events