Previous Next

At last! A decent sports sim that's got nothing to do with footie!

How ironic to find a sport which requires so much physical effort simulated in a medium which requires so little. Home computer squash has been around since the days of those simplistic hand-held units - it was fun then and it's no less enjoyable in its new form.

The world championship in Jahangir Khan's World Championship Squash is only one half of the story. It's advisable to play the Club Tournament option and attempt to win the league before taking on the world's finest. It takes a little while to get to grips with the perspective, not to mention the standard control mode (the simplified version is a little too simplistic for its own good), but then it's simply a matter of reacting fast enough to enjoy high-speed rallies punctuated by a devious soft shot or nine. And right smashing it feels too.

Unsurprisingly, Jahangir Khan's World Championship Squash is best enjoyed when playing against a second human-controlled player. Even so, the computer-controlled opponent does play a believable and challenging game. And, just like the great man himself, his computer squash plays by the rules.

There's nothing actually wrong with Jahangir Khan's World Championship Squash. Well, unless you object to the lack of female players or other International Tournaments so you can mimic Jahangir's uncanny success, that is. What Jahangir Khan's World Championship Squash does, it does very well and as such it offers a decent, viable alternative to the teaming mass of football simulations available. I mean, what else is there to be done with squash that could possible make it any more interesting? Exactly.

Far from being a distant relative of the tiger out of the Jungle Book, Jahangir Khan is in fact one of the world's most successful sportsmen and, apparently, the fittest. The 27-year-old started playing squash at the age of seven. At 15 he won the World Amateur Championship and two years later become the youngest ever Professioonal World Champion - a title he's won a further five times since.

On the last weekend in April, the Karachi-born son of 1957's British Squash Champion Rossan Khan won his 10th consecutive British Open title. As well as winning every squash title in the world, Jahangir played in over 500 International matches in a six-year span without defeat.

It won't come as any great surprise to learn that apparently literally translated his name means 'conqueror of the world'.

At least it's not another footie game. Polished and playable but far from outstanding. It's as simple as that.