Previous Next

At last, it can be revealed! The venue for the 1992 Olympics isn't going to be Birmingham, London or even Edinburgh. The major sporting event of the decade is going to be held in the Dog And Nightgown, near Nether Wallop. And you can forget all this Decathlon business - all the participants will be playing skittles, darts, dominoes and the odd game of cards.

OK, maybe not. But you can take part in the pub Olympics thanks to Alligata. All the games you need to play before they put a Space Invaders machine where the Bar Billiards table used to be. Ironic, isn't it? Here you are, playing games on computer that have been pushed out of pubs by videogames!

You get seven games in the package - darts, dominoes, poker, pontoon, skittles, table football (my favourite) and good old bar billiards.

Graphics vary considerably in style and design from version to version as does the screen layout - but both packages have similar playability.

The C64 version has a neat multi-load on tape. You can choose to play all the events in sequence or practise one at a time. The program prompts you once the menu has loaded and if you pick just one event the tape winds on to the correct place and a further prompt appears.

The Spectrum version simply skips code you don't want to load in - so it's a good idea to make notes of the tape counter readings, unless you want to wait around for ages.

For my money, the "action" games like football, skittles and darts are the best. The program plays a good hand of Poker and Pontoon but cards on computer just aren't the same as the real thing, are they? Dominoes is good - especially on the C64. It's simply because of the extras it has on-screen. Extras like a little window which tells you what you need to score for each player and a nice graphic representation of a darts player in one of those silly shirts they all wear.

Both versions of the game have the irritating "hit wire" feature which takes an age to finish and disrupts the game more than when it happens in real life.

C64 versions of skittles - which looks more like ten-pin bowling to me - and bar billiards have forced perspective "3D" graphics while the Spectrum has plan views of both.

Table football is the best of the collection to my mind - it's fast and addictive. Like the real thing - escape you can't really perform those flashy flicks of the wrist on a joystick...

Bar Billiards is fun on both machines - and if you enjoy this on computer, you should try the proper game. Better than pool in my book.

Skittles is quite challenging but the controls are a bit tricky to master at first on the C64 version.

Overall, a value-for-money package from Alligata - a good one to find in your Christmas stocking. The lastability of some of the games included could be a bit suspect. But the mixture of three old classics on one user-friendly tape is an intoxicating cocktail.