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When I was a young lad (we're talking quite some time ago now, but bear with me), some of my friends and I used to play the imaginatively-named game of Two-A-Side. This involved two teams of two players playing football on an ordinary full-sized pitch and it was brilliant fun, although you got completely and utterly knackered after about an hour. For such a simple game, the tactical depth which could be employed was quite considerable - do you keep one player in goal and send the other one out by himself to do lots of clever Brazilian-type solo runs, or do you both play outfield, making lots of clever passing moves but risking having an undefended goal if you lose possession? Or did you just hang back for most of the game and let the other team attack until they were completely exhausted and then run rings round them for the last ten minutes and score half-a-dozen goals? The permutations and strategies were endless, and I often wonder nostalgically why nobody seems to play the game anymore.

Now I know what you're thinking. 'Yes yes, Stuart', you're thinking, 'This is all unbelievably interesting and everything, but why don't you shut up about when you were a little boy and tell us about Skate Wars, hmm?" Well, there's a very good reason. Skate Wars is rubbish and I thought you'd be much more interested in fascinating tales of my younger days, that's all.

Actually, that's not strictly true. Skate Wars is, in fact, Two-A-Side on a Speccy. Oh yeah, there's a bit more to it, like the fact that one of your team's players does indeed stay in goal all the time, or the fact that you can tackle your opponent by doing a flying kick on him, or even the obstacles which litter the pitch on the higher levels (a bit like the rocks and potholes which used to be found on our one, actually), but basically it's the same thing. It's just jerky, boring, crap to control and almost totally pointless, that's all.