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A pub with no beer may not be such a bad idea if Alligata's latest compendium is anything to go by. Grab a bottle of shandy and away we go...

The result of many years of serious research. Pub Games has all of the traditional pastimes which these cases of alcoholic oblivion have to offer. Darts, bar billiards, dominoes, pontoon, poker, table football and skittles, with so many games who needs the amber nectar anyway?

I admit that I didn't think I'd like this collection when I first saw it advertised but the sheer quality of most of the games won me over in the end. All of the games require a human opponent which adds to the pub atmosphere, the only thing that they've forgotten is a double image version to simulate the last game before closing time.

Kicking off with darts, it's up to the oche and game on. The screen shows a dartboard with a superbly animated hand ranging up and down, little finger crooked in best bar room style. As the hand moves you have to find your target, and release the dart. If it finds its mark, the score is chalked up but there's always the danger of it bouncing off the wire and plummeting to the floor.

A touch of the professional championship is given by the cry of 'one hundred and eighty' when a maximum is scored. It may not be a true synthesised voice but the C64 hums the tune very convincingly. After three games of 501, double to finish (I'll have to scotch), the results are chalked up on the master scoreboard and bar billiards loads up from the tape.

Those unfamiliar with this game may well be satisfied with Alligata's rules, but afficionados of the game will be disappointed by the end game. Unlike an official billiards table, the holes are spread across the table, not in the corners. There are wooden mushrooms placed at strategic points.

Avoiding the mushrooms and pocket a ball to score the point value of that particular hole will build up a break score. If you hit the red mushroom your entire score is reduced to zero but if you hit one of the other mushrooms, you lose your current break score and the next player takes over.

In the real game, a bar drops after about ten minutes play and pocketed balls cannot be brought back into play. If the red ball is left up at the end, a sudden death game results as each player has full control for up, down and rotate. This really captures the essence of the game more successfully than any of the other games and the comparatively civilised game session suddenly breaks into the frantic action of a head-to-head battle. After three rounds of tense action it's back to the leisurely action of skittles.

Beer and skittles go together like bread and butter. I was a bit disappointed that the game is not the traditional table-top skittles, but the six-pin forerunner to ten-pin bowling.

This collection gives good value for money but where is the fruit machine? After all, most pubs these days have precious little other entertainment. Often the dartboard is inaccessible except on match nights and the domino set has pieces missing. This is an idealised view of pub entertainment complete with the jangling piano playing all the old favourites.

Considering my initial doubts about these games, I was pleasantly surprised by the end of the session.