The trouble with saying things like "what the Archimedes really needs is a nuclear war/ice hockey/basket weaving/whatever game" is that, when it arrives, it's usually a disappointment. Not so with The Olympics. Compilation packages of sporting events may have been around on other machines for ages but the first one for the Arc is every bit as good.

There are six events in all: Diving, Shooting, Javelin, Drowning, Floating into things and Polevault. Each has been designed to demand specific skills using combinations of mouse and keyboard control, but without resorting to keyboard bashing.

The graphics are quite pretty and the crowd cheers at the appropriate moments. I found some events markedly easier than others, getting near record scores with my first attempts at both the Javelin and Polevault whilst failing miserably on both Swimming and Canoeing.

The real fun of the game comes in pitting your wits against another. Each player selects a nation to represent and you start a six event competition, the winner of each event getting their national anthem played - so if you've never heard the Dutch national anthem before, this is your big chance! Points scored on each event add up to a grand total, producing an eventual winner.

The Shooting allows the choice of either a predetermined or a random release of the clay pigeons and lets you adjust the mouse's response sensitivity. The Swimming race offers alternative strokes and distances to compete with and the Canoeing courses can be adjusted for complexity and the presence of currents. I found the Canoeing hard enough on its simplest setting, so there would appear to be plenty of room for developing skills.

A gold medalist