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Within five minutes of booting this up, I had Lee Sharpe emerging from an untidy midfield melee, skipping through the left wing and crossing over for Mark Hughes to make a subtle touch before rocketing the ball into the goal.

The little Sparky character rolled over towards the crowd and performed his victory salute before being mauled by tiny team mates. Any student of the ways of Old Trafford will happily admit that this is glorious realism.

I have to confess to a love of Manchester United football that verges on the obsessive so please forgive this review's ridiculous enthusiasm. But honestly, this really is a marvellous football game.

Manchester United Europe is viewed in the familiar sideways view three dimensional fashion with the computer choosing which player the joystick dictates to at any time. Unlike so many football games this is done exceptionally intuitively, so there's none of that frustrating hanging around while the program finally decides to nominate a character to chase some rampaging centre-forward.

There are bagfuls of controls at your disposal but you won't need to wade through a manual to learn them. Tackling, shooting, dribbling and so on come naturally and sweetly. Too many games are obsessed with making you work to attain skills which would be elementary to any half-decent footballer - Manchester United lets you get on with trying to win games straight away.

Having said that though, we're not talking about a simple stroll towards the European Cup Final in your first campaign - Manchester United Europe provides a learning curve which is sensible while challenging, and winning games is no breeze. Still, at least when you're beaten there's nobody at fault but yourself - you can't blame the game's controls, which makes for such a refreshing change (I've broken more joysticks that I care to count after grappling with certain soccer simulations).

It won't appeal to everyone though. Strict football strategists should keep away because this is first and foremost an action game. Strategy is (thankfully) limited to picking the team and sorting out formations, and even that is optional.

What else can I say? Well, the game's fast, but not stupidly so, the sound is good, it sticks to the rules of the real game but - hey! - enough already. If soccer is your thing, just go out and buy this, okay? (Even if you hate Man United.)

Great, wonderful, superb (though not without imperfections). Beats the hell out of all those terrible football games you've tried before.