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Eric has a penchant for pints and a passion for darts. He's a fat, drunken slob who plays under your control, in between knocking back the bitter, retiring to the gents or quietly falling through the floor.

Eric takes on a 301 or 501 game for one or two players, according to established rules: you whittle away the total, and finish with a double. But the real challenge is to cope with Eric's weakness for the demon drink, and its attendant ills, if you are to finish a game, let alone beat someone else. The champ develops from merely merry through to paralytic and beyond help. Your only hope is to score before Eric has seen the bottom of too many glasses and been rendered dead drunk - literally.

To put darts on a micro satisfactorily is well-nigh impossible: Eric represents a compromise by making this a game of chance.

No time to pause and get the feel of the darts. You must press any key to stop the cursor as it zips round a yellow and black board. Once you've chosen a segment to aim for, you close in on it and attempt to increase your score by stopping the cursor on a double or treble. But you must first hit the 3 segment to score 25 or a bull's eye.

Delay or inaccuracy means the dart simply bounces out of the board.

In one corner of the screen is a cartoon, so you can watch the revolting Eric make a throw or swallow another pint with a disgusting glugging sound.

The depiction of Eric's activities is exquisite. However, once you've seen one wonky throw, and marvelled, you've seen them all.

Practised as Eric is, he's also increasingly squiffy. Each shot increases his blood alcohol level as surely as the beer. Not only is Eric capable of missing the segment you've aimed for, or simply dropping the dart, but his weak bladder will put him out of the picture, as does falling through the floorboards due to his obesity.

His environment is no help. Well-meaning fans keep topping up the bitter while other meanies lace it with stronger stuff. The crowd's loud chatter may even blow a dart wildly off course.

Eric's peccadilloes are amusing for only a limited time. After that they just become irritating and his essential charmlessness shows through. The balance is weighted too much in favour of chance, and for lasting entertainment Eric's score is likelier to be nearer the madhouse than double top.