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Now that the Olympics is all over and the athletes have gone home - some sooner than others! - it's time to get down to the real nitty gritty of what sport is all about. By Fair Means Or Foul is a boxing simulation where anything goes. It's what most sportsmen and women, if they would only admit it, are all about - winning at any cost.

The dirty business in By Fair Means Or Foul is all up front where the crowd (but not the ref) can see it. None of this surreptitious steroid stuffing months before the event, here we're more into the crafty knee in the groin, the innocent below the belt punch and the outrageously overt headbutt. Not so much Ben Johnson Academy of Artificial Additives as the Paul Davis School of Unarmed Combat.

You can do some serious violence on a friend if you happen to have two joysticks, otherwise you'll have to content yourself with beating the living daylights out of a computer opponent. The truly wicked might try opting for the two player game than beating hell out of an undefended opponent while he stands there rooted to the canvas.

You can start off with Mild Martin who's not really all that mild, unless you call a swift kick in the nuts a bit of friendly fun. If you're any good you can take on Steady Eddie, Dirty Larry, Fast Freddy, Ronny Razor and Deadly Dan. The introduction screen gives you their vital statistics, plus a Legoland style mugshot.

Before you actually get yourself into trouble, take a few shots in the practice ring where you can take it out on a punchbag on one side of the ring and a ball on the other. This'll help you get acquainted with the sixteen moves that are available.

Once you're in the ring, you won't have time to refer to the instructions. The bell goes for round one and your mean-looking opponent is out of this corner and heading straight for you faster than a miffed Korean ring official.

The crowd as in an ugly mood and speech balloons saying "Get on with it!" and "ZZZZZ!" rise from the seething mass. The ideal technique is to get in there, strike home with a few jabs and move off before you get hurt. That way you can keep up your energy bar and whittle away at your opponents bit by bit. You must keep up the attacks or his energy meter will gradually creep back up to full. At the end of the sixty seconds the player with the higher energy rating wins the round.

If you want to score a direct KO you'll have to play dirty (unless you are a very good clean fighter). The mark of a truly great dirty fighter is knowing when to throw the foul punch. A traffic light type indicator at the top of the screen helps. The little man shows green when the ref's not looking and red when a foul punch would have you sent back to your corner (you can get off lightly in this game!). So as soon as the green light shows, that's the time to go in with the vicious kicks, below the belt punches, your knees, head, anything you can really hurt him with.

As you have probably noticed from the screenshot, By Fair Means Or Foul can hardly be said to be pushing back the frontiers of C64's graphics. Why one boxer is purple (apart from possibly the side effects of all those synthetic substances) is a complete mystery.

The action is quite humorous - at first - but the novelty soon wears off. If By Fair Means Or Foul is a winner, then it's by a poke in the eye, rather than a clean knock-out.