What do games like Star Raiders II, Academy, Escape From Singe's Castle, Baby Boomer Trivial Pursuits and Winter Games have in common? The answer is they're all sequels.

Sequels aren't exactly new, after all the films Star Trek IV, Rocky IV and James Bond No. 14 have all done the rounds. Quite often sequels are better than the originals and generate yet more sequels.

Back to home computers. The prize for the world's worst sequel must go to Virgin for its FA Cup '87. The name should sound familiar - it's supposed to be an updated version of FA Cup Football. Unfortunately, it's almost identical and grossly over-priced. Another soccer sequel con was US Gold's World Cup Carnival which was a re-packaged version of Artic's World Cup sequel.

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If you think that's bizarre, what about Alligata's Who Dares Wins II? The sequel without an original! This was a hastily re-written version of the unpublished Who Dares Wins - Alligata tried and failed to prevent Elite taking legal action alleging Who Dares Wins was similar to its Commando game.

Crl's excellent Tau Ceti has spawned a number of games featuring the Gal Corps. The Ball Blazer/Breakout game Room 10 was set in a Gal Corps leisure complex. Spectrum 128 and Amstrad owners can get a special edition of the original game featuring impressive building interiors, libraries and bigger game area. Even Cyborg - reviewed elsewhere in this issue - is controlled by the Gal Corps.

Aliens is probably the oddest of sequels. Alien the film spawned Alien the game, which was released by Mind Games and then by Bug Byte. However, Aliens, the sequel to the film, produced two different games. Both versions have been featured in recent Gamers - one is British and from Electric Dreams the other American, from Activision.

But undoubtedly the most controversial sequel was Beach Head II. This Access (US Gold) compilation of arcade wargames created near panic in the anti-wargame lobby - including Radio 4 - as it featured realistic synthesised screams and yells as hapless soldiers were shot or crushed under tanks!

Repton and Repton 2 have amazed BBC owners with their fast and frantic Boulderdash-style gameplay but only now, with the release of Repton 3, can Commodore 64 and Amstrad owners join in the run. Similarly, Summer Games was imported by Quicksilva and just missed out on the Decathlon boom. Undaunted, Epyx, now distributed by US Gold, released sequels and an incredible series of sports simulations appeared, these included the seven event Summer Games II, featuring impossible equestrian and canoeing events; the award-winning Winter Games and the recent World Games compilation.

The Leader Board sequels have travelled almost full circle. The original Access hit and hope golf game came complete with four incredibly wet courses. In fact, the holes were little more than islands set in a massive lake! Leader Board Tournament added four more equally wet courses, but Leader Board Executive is a totally re-vamped game with the added hazards of trees and bunkers. What's next, I wonder, Leader Board Executive Tournament?

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Daley Thompson's Supertest was the dismal follow-up to the chart-busting Daley Thompson's Decathlon and featured the great man in ten rather silly events, like shooting, and was a shadow of the original. The opposite is true of Pitstop and its successor Pitstop II. The original was a standard 3D racing game but boasted an additional feature - you pulled into the pits for refuelling and a tyre change. Pitstop II duplicated this but added a split-screen display and a second player. The result was one of the best car racing games ever that left Pole Position standing.

Adventures haven't escaped the sequel syndrome. In fact, I think that the first computer sequel was an adventure - Zork II. This, the second in Infocom's classic Zork trilogy, is featured elsewhere in this issue. Another classic adventure sequel is the role-playing extravaganza, Ultima III and its sequel, Ultima IV. However, as the names suggest, there are two previous Ultimas. Unfortunately, these were released by different companies and it's unlikely they'll make the trip across the Atlantic.

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Another role-playing game, Alternate Reality, makes its UK debut last year and has rapidly become a cult game. This two-disk starter pack is soon to be joined by no less than six sequels! The original game plots your adventures in a city beneath which lie the subterranean depths of the dungeon and beyond that the combat, challenge of the arena, the riches of the palace, the exploration of the wilderness and, finally, the adventure ends in revelation and destiny!

Level 9 seems to think good things come in threes. For instance, there was Jewels Of Darkness; Colossal Adventure; Adventure Quest and Dungeon Adventure. Then there was Silicon Dreams; Snowball; Return To Eden and The Worm In Paradise. These have now been re-packaged and re-released by Rainbird. Each trilogy contains countless locations and a staggering 600 illustrations.

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Shadowfire stunned the computer world and swept the awards - it was the first icon driven adventure. Icons caught on so fast that the new icon games have been more successful than Shadowfire's sequel, Enigma Force, which tried to transport the icon-driven heroes to an arcade game.

This idea, re-shaped, became the arcade adventure, now desperately overworked and the impressive Fairlight II is one of these, as is Mastertronic's cut-price classic Knight Tyme, the more playable sequel to Spellbound.

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Quickening the pace, kung-fu champs can get an extra kick with more of the same in Yie Ar Kung Fu II.

Gremlin Graphics - the people behind Thing On A Spring II and the latest Monty Mole game featured last month - has taken the unusual decision to change the game format for the sequel to Way Of The Tiger. In a well-timed move, with Avenger Gremlin chose not to make into yet another kung-fu game - it is a more Gauntlet style instead. Similarly, Activision changed the puzzle solving Hacker into a "guide the robots around a maze"-type sequel called Hacker II.

Platform games were among the first to have sequels. The incredibly playable Bounty Bob Strikes Back was one of the first and was the follow-up to Miner 2049:er, which went on to inspire Manic Miner, which then spawned Jet Set Willy and so on.

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The rock-pushing, diamond collecting Boulderdash was one of the first games I ever reviewed. It has since been followed by Rockford's Riot (both by Beyond) and now by the Boulderdash Construction Set (Databyte). Databyte has also produced the third in the superb Spy Vs. Spy series which has moved from the inside of a building - in the original spy game, to an island in Spy II and now to frozen wastelands in Spy Vs. Spy II. Despite the changes of location and of software house, the black and white spies are still building unbellievable traps for each other in games that mimic their comic book capers.

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Escape From Singe's Castle is the sequel to Software Projects' coin-op conversion of the incredible Dragon's Lair video game. In part two, you get to guide Dirk the Daring through eight more serious of this fiendish arcade adventure.

Two other sequels to coin-op conversions have just been released: Bombjack II and Gauntlet: The Deeper Dungeons. The latest in the continuing Trivial Pursuit series, the Baby Boomer Edition, is also out, as is Star Raiders II - the long awaited follow-up to the Atari classic, and an Amstrad whodunnit. The Sydney Affair, the sequel L'Affaire Vera Cruz. All are reviewed below, so read on...