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Most compilations have a theme, but they're usually tenuous to say the least. The only thing to connect the games in Award Winners is that they've all won awards. Uncanny.

Let's kick off with a dud. Space Ace was developed from those useless laser disk games with frighteningly good graphics but oddly absent gameplay. Unfortunately, nothing has been lost in the translation - the game's just as bad on the ST. It consists of a series of short animated scenes starring the Ace himself as he battles to defeat... and so on. You don't have much control over Acey. Your involvement is limited to a few apposite joystick nudges at the right places - so if Ace is in danger of falling off a ledge, you might have to choose between sending him left or right. One direction is always wrong and sends Ace to a nasty doom.

The game quickly becomes very frustrating: you have a very limited time to choose Ace's movement and it needs to be performed at exactly the right moment. Although the graphics and sound are superlative, one or two joystick movements just aren't enough to keep you interested.

Of all the football games that have been released, Kick Off 2 is the best. Full stop. It's an overhead-view sim that features just about everything you could want from a decent footy game. There are five divisions from Fourth to International, loads of stats for each player - though they can't be changed - an an intelligent opposition. They get faster as you move up the divisions, so it's best to start off in the Fourth. One of the best things about the game is that you can save your 'golden' goals for replay later. Make disks full of them and you can get dewy-eyed reliving your finest moments.

The graphics are small and not wonderfully animated, though they have some good touches: players do handstands when they score a goal and limp off when injured. The pitch scrolls at blistering speeds which may be disorientating, it goes so fast.

The game possesses a magnificent ability to draw you in and get you totally hooked for at least three months, but only if you keep at it. And saying you don't like football is no use; by the time you've thrashed through four divisions, you will. Most wonderful.

Another groovy puzzler that makes Tetris look like the pale, pathetic thing it is. The concept behind it is like this: each screen is divided into a grid. Somewhere on the grid is a "tap" out of which starts to flow a liquid called flooz. At the side of the screen, pieces of pipe appear in a certain sequence - straight sections, corners, curves and junctions. You have to place the pieces on the grid so the flooz flows without hitting a non-pipe section.

The thing is, the pipe bits don't appear in the right order - you have to place them by planning ahead and working out how to put the pipe together. A particular number of these pieces need to be placed on each level before the time limit runs out. This is made more difficult on the later levels because there are certain grid sections that the liquid has to flow through, bonus sections to give you extra points, and other special bits like reservoirs that slow down the flow for a while. The game starts off fairly slowly, once you get the feel of it, but soon gets very frantic indeed. The grids get more difficult, the pieces get more awkward and the times gets shorter. It's an excellent game with a brilliantly simple but involving concept.

What can you say about Populous that hasn't already been said? It's the game that started a genre, the god game. It's a bit complicated to explain here, and anyway the entire population of the world now knows how to play it. Suffice it to say it involves two populations throwing nasty effects at each other in an attempt to become the dominant race. Populous never was the zippiest of movers, and now it's looking decidedly tortoise-like. The screen update jerks perceptibly when a lot of your men are on screen at once, and some of the effects are a bit cheesy. Still, it's a historic game, and well worth playing.

Award Winners really is a good compilation. Three excellent (and classic) games with just one duff is pretty good going: any one of the three keeps you going for ages, and you can at least use a cheat on Space Ace and gawp at the pretty graphics. For a bit more than something awful like Space Gun, you can have a compilation that's really worth its salt. Can't be bad.

1. Three quarters of Award Winners is really stonking. The other quarter you can always format, or carve into an authentic ethnic earring, or something.
2. And the box is quite attractive too.