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You've got to be well hard and on the ball if you want to get very far with this primeval (well, 1987) offering from The Hit Squad. Your stamina's going to get severely tested, so load up with crisps, lemonade and crunchy popcorn if you want to stay with the pace. Well, your stamina isn't really going to get tested at all, more likely your attention span. Nevertheless, it has to be stated that there aren't too many baseball games on the go. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? You're the audience, you decide. What do you mean, that's my job?

Ah. Stuart's just told me it is my job, so here goes. Hardball harks back to the days when men were men, women were women and Joe Theismann still had a serviceable knee and the highest pay cheque in American Football (yes, that long ago). Despite the visually-challenged graphics, it does have a certain amount of charm in a sentimental old kind of way. There are a certain amount of incidental control and selection details to show that some considered thought has been put into the gameplay. Well, a bit, anyway. Competition against another human being is considerably more stimulating and gratifying to the soul, karma, psyche, drama, essence or whatever than competition against a computer (especially when you win), so stick with that or you're likely to get horribly bored. Practice against the Amiga to tone your skills, by all means, but then throw down the gauntlet or baseball bat to a friend and prepare for the real excitement of computer-assisted mano-a-mano competition.

One word of warning. Keep breakables out of reach while you're playing. You might just want to 'strike' someone or something 'hard' with a 'ball' if you lose. [Okay, you're new here, so we'll it go just thise once, Steve. Any more of that and you're fired - Ed]

Dull and dated baseball sim that, like most things, manages to come up with a fair bit of entertainment if you rope a friend into joining in.