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Hello, and welcome to Dino Dini's Goal!, a game which Virgin touts as leagues ahead of other footie games. Yeah, chinny reckon...

The ST sure has its moments. Despite being seen by most gamesplayers as a second-tier machine, we're still treated to some of the most excellent titles seen on other formats - if a little later than others. Last month we reviewed Frontier: a hugely-hyped game with gameplay to match. Now we have Goal!, Dino Dini's much-publicised sequel to Kick Off 2. Not bad, eh?

Let's review the scene so far. Most ST footie players belong to one of two camps: the Kick Off 2 camp, and the Sensible Soccer camp. Sensible Soccer was released in mid-1992, and is generally acclaimed to be the best football game on the ST. Kick Off 2 was an earlier game, but still some players insist that the earlier game pips the newcomer to the post. Just to help redress the balance, though, the aforementioned author of Kick Off 2 has redesigned his game and released it through Virgin under the name of Goal!. The Kick Off games had one distinct advantage over Sensible Soccer, and that was the ability to trap the ball.

By holding the fire button down, your player would hold the ball under his foot, giving you plenty of tme to look for that special cross to the right winger before letting rip. Goal! keeps this feature, along with many of the other good bits from Kick Off 2.

The most noticeable difference between this and the previous game, in fact, is the different in the size of the sprites. Each player is significantly larger than its Kick Off counterpart, so Dino has been able to give them more human features and animation. Because the scale is quite large, you view the pitch from just above the players, only able to see a small amount of the pitch at any one time. This doesn't make for easy strategic play, but you're given a scanner which tells you the position of the players and ball on the pitch. The scanner sits in one corner of the screen, moving to a different corner if it interferes with play - an attention detail feature which earns it some credit.

Goal! also features a horizontally-scrolling pitch as well as the more usual vertical. This seemingly frivolous addition actually gives the game extra appeal, if only because in two-player mode nobody really has an advantage (Whereas in vertically-scrolling mode, it's generally considered that playing downwards is something of a handicap). There's no net in the goal-mouth, but more about that later.

As well as playing single games, all the usual competitions are lurking around the options screen. These give you and some friends the chance to pit your wits against each other and up to 63 computer teams in a league or cup challenge. The cup is something that even the Amiga version didn't contain, showing that being rather late on the list of developments can sometimes have its advantages.

The teams are chosen from around Europe. Sadly, although real-life teams are on offer, the team lists are way out of date. For example, in Liverpool Irvan Kozma is still playing in the first team, whereas in real-life he's hanging around waiting to be deported. Similarly, Mike Marsh and David Burrows both went to West Ham some months ago. The world of football transfers is never easy to follow, but a little more thought would have been good here.

Also, team colours are a bug-bear. Talking Liverpool again, both home and away kits feature white shorts. Come on - when have Liverpool ever played in white shorts?

On the positive side, Goal! is very easy to pick up and play. The controls are simple and intuitive, and the ability to trap and control the ball is as useful as ever. A new feature which makes it even easier is momentum; each player has its own apparent weight. So, when you move your joystick, instead of your player running at top speed immediately, he accelerates. When you change direction, the player still has some momentum making fast 180 degree turns difficult. So, running with the ball and dribbling are possible, without needing to touch the fire button. Great touch.

The lack of a goal net is extremely off-putting. Yes, just like Kick Off 2, sadly the goal is entirely bare, giving the impression that it's more of a rugby pitch than a football ground. Presumably the goal posts' nakedness has something to do with difficulty in keeping the keeper, so to speak, behind his net; but surely a net of some sort could have been fashioned. As it is, it just looks ridiculous.

Then, just to add insult to injury, Goal! delivers another crashing blow to those who believe the ST to be as capable as any other machine to run games. Get this: despite there being four different types of pitch - dry, wet, muddy and Wembley - there is only one pitch graphic. So, when recreating a lovely, sunny day in Wembley, Goal! displays a gorgeous, well-rolled green pasture, with no blemishes to spoil the uniformity. But select a muddy pitch, to create a dirty, soiled, damp scene of football at its most moist, and your eyes are treated to a... gorgeous, well-rolled green pasture, with no blemishes to spoil the uniformity.

Also, the green stripes of the pitch have a tendency to drift up and down, regardless of your or the ball's position on the pitch. This is worse when playing horizontally, where the stripes of the pitch go lengthways along the pitch. The horizontal play, incidentally, is so bug-ridden and glitchy that it's not even worth mentioning.

Even the one pitch here seems to have no, oh, what's the word; atmosphere? There's no advertising hoardings lining the pitch, only the odd crackly sampled crowd. And there's only a very limited range of sound effects. Why, why, oh why? Perhaps to conserve costs in only requiring one disk instead ot the Amiga's two. Perhaps because of time constraints. Surely, though, for no other reason.

The Amiga version of Goal! was criticised for not having enough detail, but this really is just taking the mickey. Loads of tweaks have been made to the gameplay which make it great to play, but sadly the lack of pitch variety or sound effects spoil the presentation. The large number of competitions, tactics and teams are great, but again it's slightly marred by lack of attention to detail, especially in the team lists and colours.

And the bugs... well, they spoil it entirely. Sometimes you can't get through a single game without it crashing, never mind an entire competition. It took us an entire day to grab the images of the game you see in this review, because the damn thing kept hanging up. And even if you do manage a game, your players disappear occasionally, and then magically re-appear elsewhere, or the movement slows down horribly and your players jerk around. Sorry Virgin, but the polished finish of Sensible Soccer still does it for us, even a year after the event.

It has been said for a while the ST games market is wilting. To that group of steadfast ST believers who strongly perceive that there are many companies out there that are still willing to plough money and time into creating top quality games for the ST (and, we might add, a group to which ST Format subscribes), Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe) Ltd waves Goal! And laughs, no doubt.

It's all very well producing the games, bringing big names such as Bart Vs. The World, Goal! and the forthcoming Cannon Fodder to the ST, but if they're not willing to make them any good then, quite frankly, Virgin might as well not bother. Take the travesty of Bart reviewed in last month's ST Format. This disastrous game, programmed by the over-rated Acclaim and bought by Cirgin, should never have seen the light of day in its current form.

Sensing this, Virgin slipped Bart out of the back doow without telling any of the magazines, ensnaring as many innocent wide-eyed children, grasping weeks of patiently-earned pocket money in their hand, as possible. This Dickensian scenario goes on, there's no denying that, and now, with Goal!, they've done the same thing again. Actually, Goal! isn't that bad. It's not great, but it can hardly be compared with the utterly awful Bart. Yet still the second full-price game from Virgin in less than a month smells of slashed budgets and rushed deadlines. There are so many bugs and glitches in it that there's no way it should have passed through quality control.

So, the ST is stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy, which states: "ST games shall continue to be shoddy and poorly-produced, which is turn shall continue the ST's decrease in popularity with the game-playing masses. This reduces the number of games sold, which decreases the amount of resources pushed into the games, which reduces the qality of the games." Gasp.

This is exactly what's happening to the ST. Piracy may be one reason for its failing, but poor-quality games are a second thorn in the side. I'm not saying that the salvation of the ST lies entirely on Virgin's shoulders, but on all producers of ST games. David Braben's Frontier proved that the ST is still a markedly capable machine, and if more effort was spent on creating quality games, the situation might get better.

Virgin's next, and possibly last, offering for the ST is Cannon Fodder from the golden boys Sensible Software. Surely nothing can go wrong with that release? ST games are now at an all-time low. The time has come to start looking upwards again.

1. Each player carries momentum, making dribbling easy.
2. Fast, furious football action (when it works).

1. It crashes. A lot. Goal! has no net, all pitch styles look the same.