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If my experience is anything to go by, most people's idea of a bobsleigh is anything from a tin tray to a bin bag. The absolute killer, if you can get away with it is the fridge door. Expect stiff penalties if you're caught though.

No such mucking around with Digital Integration's Bobsleigh. Like all their simulations, this is serious stuff featuring very expensive gear and all the best snow spots this side of the alps. DI have gone to their usual trouble to ensure that everything is as it should be.

If you've played Winter Sports, Winter Events, or anything like that, then you'll have a good idea what this is all about. I must admit to being just a bit disappointed that Bobsleigh featured action and graphics no more impressive than any of its multi-event predecessors. In fact, it looks very familiar. All the effort here has gone into making the simulation as real as possible, not in terms of the run itself, but in what you have to do as a team manager to get to, and win the Olympic games. So if you already have Winter Sports with its bobsleigh run, but are looking for improved realism in the action sequences, you'd better look somewhere else, Bobsleigh doesn't have it.

So what does it have? Well, it has six authentic tracks - St Moritz, Konigssee, Innsbruck, Winterberg, Calgary and Brueil. It has choice of different types of bobsleigh and different types of runner for varying weather conditions. It has financial realism; you must pay for everything including fitness training, colour co-ordinated team gear, repairs to your bob when your write it off through careless driving, two tennis racquets in case you have to walk to the bar and a pair of ear muffs in case your bobble hat blows off. It also gets the thumbs up from the British Bobsleigh Association and Nick Phipps and Alan Cearnes, who, apparently, are pretty good at the real thing.

Off the track the whole thing is menu-controlled. To begin with, you will need to decide what kind of event to go in for, what kind of bob to try and kill yourself in, and whether you want to buy additional goodies like fitness training, steroids, tracksuits and the like. As a beginner you won't even get a look at the olympic course until you're rich enough to buy an olympic bob and finish in the top three at the world championships. In the early stages it's best to go for the single events, moving on to six event seasons when you've at least got the skill and confidence to reach the end of the track without a major disaster. At this stage it's probably as well to nothing left but to give it a go. In bobsleigh you get to do the run twice (whoopee!) and your two times are added together.

All the hard work comes at the beginning, where all you can see in the action window is the stationary bob with two little hands clutching the rail. Yes, it's time for a push start. The matrix board above your head indicates 'Get Set', turns red, then a green 'GO' signals the off and it's wiggle-the-joystick-like-a-loony time. Thankfully, this only lasts a few seconds, or 50 metres, at which time it's a good idea to press the fire button and jump in. Omission of this crucial part of the proceedings will result in the bobsleigh attempting the run without you. It's not very good at it.

From here on down it's just a question of keeping the thing the right way up and pointing in the right direction, which is a lot more difficult than it sounds. The trick is to anticipate the bends and find the smoothest line possible through them. Crashing into the side walls, if it doesn't stop you altogether, will slow you down considerably. Outside the action window is displayed a speedo, a split time indicator which records your progress at the quarter, half and three-quarter stage intervals, the track record and of course the current time. In the likely event of your cocking the whole thing up and attempting to finish on your bum, you can get a map showing exactly where on the course you copped it.

Once you become competent at getting down in one piece without the French, Swiss and Germans sniggering at your appallingly bad time, the thing becomes a lot more enjoyable because you can then start accumulating sponsorship money, racing to win, and aiming for that Olympic gold. DI have done their homework and I've no doubt that all the details are in there, but for me that didn't make up for the disappointment of seeing the old 'bob standard' Cresta Run style display, I was expecting something new and this just didn't cut the ice.