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The Games: Summer Edition, or rather Summer Games III falls well into the reputation of the seemingly endless Games series that started all that time ago with Summer Games. By that I mean great graphics, terrific sound, stacks of playability and horrendous multi-loading.

The whole point behind the Games series is that they give all the same old twaddle, but dress it up so you think you're getting something new. And to be honest, they've done a fine job at dressing this one up.

What you get are eight events, all portrayed in a new and interesting way. They are:

Diving. More than a little similar to the original Summer Games event, except that now it boasts much fancier graphics and is a lot easier. The idea is to make your man jump off the springy bit off wood/fibreglass and land in a large puddle in the nicest possible way.

Velodrome cycling. This is the event in which the two cyclists get chained to razor-thin cycles and have to race headlong around the inside of a bowl. The graphics are done as first-person 3D view, from slightly behind the cyclist. The 3D update is relatively smooth and very fast, giving a good overall impression of movement. Unfortunately, as before, the event is far too easy.

Hammer throwing. A good joystick waggler, this one, with some pretty amazing graphics. Waggle your stick to get the ball swinging, press fire, and then keep on waggling to get the man swinging and then press fire to let go. As there is only about one second in every twenty that's the exact moment to let go of the hammer, you usually find yourself completely mistiming it.

Parallel bars bars. Move the joystick in random movements left and right to get your athlete to do some pretty amazing things and rack up some pretty high scores. Yet another nice and easy event.

Rings. Waggle the joystick in either of the two directions to send your man up and down on the old chest muscle rippers. Yet another one of those events where you don't know what you're doing, but you still seem to do it pretty well.

Probably the most graphically interesting event is the Pole vault. Whilst your runner is racing toward the box, the 'camera' is positioned at the end of the pole, so you can look down and see his furrowed brow as he wonders whenever the pole will snap as it did to our own Daley Thompson. Once in range of the jump the view goes back to the old side on bit. Another remarkably easy event.

Hurdles. The normal bit. Waggle the joystick left and right to run faster and fire to jump.

Archery. My fave. Waggle the joystick to build up the stress on the bow, then line up the sight on the target, making sure to compensate for the wind shown by the windsock.

As usual, the game is multiload, and as this isn't much of a problem as far as disk owners are concerned, cassette owners are in for a nightmare. Most events take around three and a half minutes to load. That's a long time considering that most of the events don't take that long.

I quite like The Games: Summer Edition, but there is, as always, a fault or two. With this, the fun is incredibly short lived, due to the quickness and relative easiness of the events. That, plus the loading times, aren't enough to keep anyone playing past their bedtime.