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I just had to review this one because, you see, I think it's brill. It's one of my favourites in fact - a game I was actually quite keen to see included in our All-Time Top 100 Games supplement (but failed to mention at the time for fear that everyone would laugh at me). As it turns out, Gary quite likes it too, so perhaps we could have slipped it past everyone else after all.

Apparently based on a comic strip (westerns are still big news in France!), North And South sees you playing whichever side you fancy in the American Civil War. The idea is to take control of all the territory on the board game-style map of the USA you work with. This of course leads to battles.

Ah yes, the battles. These are ludicrously good fun - lots of tiny soldiers running forward to take pot shots at each other, cavalry charging headlong down ravines, cannons desperately trying to get a bead on each other, reinforcements arriving at the crucial moment and so on.

And that's it really - the low level of strategy, gorgeous sound, silly interludes (the race against time through the fort, for instance) and so on all add to it, but it's the battles that make the game. (Now who wants another go?)

Hilarious French slant on the simplest sort of strategy game. It really is a joy to play. Odd and (in the two player mode) simply unmissable.