One of the companies tentatively dipping a toe into Archimedes games waters is Krysalis, which has produced a highly enjoyable and detailed football simulation, the best I can recall on any machine. With the World Cup invading our TV screens I should imagine this football game will be on most Arc owners' monitors as well before long.

Here we have a full management simulation of a modern football club, with all its trials and tribulations and an excellent arcade style soccer game into the bargain. Two discs, one for each of these two contrasting but interdependent views of football, are supplied.

The management section of the game is as comprehensive as you are likely to find anywhere and is presented in the form of a menu system, with large animated 'icons' and digitised footballing pictures in the background. From this main menu, which is accompanied by better than average music (complete with football chants) you can examine and change almost any aspect of running the club.

As team manager, you can see each team-member's form, broken down into its various component parts which include tackling, shooting, confidence and passing abilities, and you can even look at their photographs. Player transfers are well dealt with, and you can buy or scout for players on the transfers list. The graphics are particularly good here when your unwanted player leaves with his boots tied around his neck, or another team's manager appears with a suitcase full of money!

If you select the progress report option, a copy of the Manchester Daily Sport is shown, the headline of which shows how you're doing in your new profession. Also shown are the first three teams on the current league table, covered in more detail in a separate section where it is possible to alter the upcoming fixtures, and even the names of the teams. Your lads are kept in trim by regular (and selective) training in each of the seven football 'disciplines': passing, tackling, marking and so on. Every member is given a proficiency rating in each of the areas, along with an overall mark based on these.

Also shown on this main screen are lists of players currently under suspension or injured, and yet more menus are available to select disc operations (successful teams can be saved/loaded at will) or to set the game preferences (game time, and key definitions for example). Once you've bought your players and supervised their training, you are finally in a position to actually play a football match.

Alternatively, you can simply skip the administration section and get straight on with some real football. One small drawback with this is that since you take the role of one team, two player games are out of the question as far as I can see.

The action side of the game will be a difficult act to follow for future football releases. Instead of the more conventional overhead view of the pitch, you are provided with a novel perspective, as if you were sitting high up in a grandstand of the stadium. The screen is in overscan mode, which means it uses for graphics the area normally taken up by borders.

As the players move around the grass the picture scrolls faultlessly, revealing new sections of detailed crowd graphics and new areas of pitch. The latter is realistically worn and muddy in places and not a uniform baize-green as in some soccer games I could mention. The enlarged screen area really gives a sense of 'being there', or watching the match on TV, and even the corner flags blow about in the breeze. The screen dramatically fades up from black to reveal graphics which have a distinct ST-ness about them. However, they're perfectly good, andusing that machine's graphics has in no way spoilt the Arc version.

Sound effects have been kept to a bare minimum, just ball-booting noises and unintelligible grunts from the players, and a prolonged roar of the crowd in the background.

The latter becomes downright irritating after a while and is impossible to turn off, once play has commenced. The motion of the players is smooth and convincing, but it struck me as being odd when somebody moving slowly (often the ref) had his legs going fifteen to the dozen! Ball control is very good indeed, and it is easy to pass accurately or administer a sliding tackle.

Both teams' goal-keepers are computer controlled, and their respective skill levels are adjustable from the menu. When a ball happens to slip past one of them a screen appears saying 'GOAL!' which displays a sort of action replay (a few coarse frames of real video).

Both teams' scores and the game time remaining flash intermittently at the top and bottom of the screen - this is not easy to read and can be distracting. The player currently under your control is well indicated by a sort of maltese cross at his feet, and there is a map in the top left corner showing everybody's whereabouts.

There is a hint embedded in the game which makes me thing that, happily, there may be more delights on the way from this source. Manchester is currently just about the 'hippest' place in the country to be, and its standing should be improved even further by this excellent piece of software.