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It was over 50 years ago that Michael Foot and Johnny Ball got together and put their names to a new sport. It caught on in a big way, and nowadays you can see folk playing 'football' in almost every football stadium in Hertfordshire.

This rather amusing little gamette gives you the chance to play any team in our beloved European Community, as well as, for some reason, Brazil, Argentina, USA and Japan. Perhaps these countries are thinking of applying for European citizenship or something. Anyway, this gives you more teams to play against.

Like most other football games, you see a section of the pitch as it scrolls around, following the ball. The nearest man on your team to the ball has a large flashing arrow over his head, and he's the one you control.

Everything is viewed from a top-down position, and the pitch is aligned left-to-right, rather than up-down, like Kick Off 2. There are big lawn-mower stripes on the pitch, which are dead useful because they give you clues as to how fast the ball is moving, and in what direction it's heading.

Right. Well that's enough visual description. Let's move on to what you have to do. The idea is, of course, to score loads of goals. You can do this in two ways. Firstly, you can practise Euro Football Champ until you're really good at it, and then get your players to weave a magic spell around the opposition until your team is in the perfect striking position. The second way, of course, is to cheat.

Like Kick Off 2, you can foul the other players. But in Euro Football Champ, you can foul them in loads of different ways. Punches, ankle crushes and neck-snaps all occur with frightening regularity.

The thing is, you don't seem to have much control over what damage you do to your opponents, and in fact all the different harming moves seem to be the same. If you hit Fire when you're not actually in control of the ball, and you're very near an opponent who is, you'll bring him down, and earn the other team a free kick. Occasionally, if you do this, you can have a man sent off, but mostly it's just a chance for the other side to welly the ball up the field.

The annoying thing is that the computer always seems to know exactly where the ref is, and only fouls you when he's technically too far away from the action to notice it. But when you try this same technique, you find out the ref is nearer than you thought, and you get hauled over the coals for it.

Right on to the so-called Artificial Intelligence that Teque told me about when I went to see them. What this basically means to you, the player, is that if you run up towards the enemy goal, you can be sure that one or two of your strikers will sensibly have positioned themselves in scoring range. This is a useful piece of information to know, because there's nothing worse when you're playing a footy game, than running up to the goal and finding that there are two million defenders and you've got nobody in support.

Scoring is an acquired skill. There's a knack to it which I've discovered, and which rarely fails. In fact, it's such a successful approach that I reckon it should have been weeded out during bug-testing. What you do is this: get the ball, then rush up the middle of the pitch towards the other goal. Nobody will tackle you until you get into the eighteen-yard area. But just before you do go over the curved line outside the area, hit the fire button and boot the ball straight at the goalie. He'll come rushing out towards you, the ball will whizz over his and any defenders' heads and drop straight into the net. As long as you fire at the right time, you'll be guaranteed of getting a goal.

Hmm. This little oversight isn't good news. What it means is that when you play the computer (at whatever level), you're able to win by doing the same thing every time.

That aside, the graphics for Euro Football Champ are big and rather nicely done. Some of the teams have rather similar colours, which is confusing when they play each other, but generally things are pretty clear. The trouble is that the update rate isn't particularly hot. The game is fairly jerky, and this tends to spoil the flow of action.

What is good, though, is the two-player option. It's fast, frantic and fairly furious, and you can't use the cheaty goal-scoring thing half as often. Brilliant.

Overall, Euro Football Champ isn't as good as Kick Off 2; it's slower and much simpler to play. Keeping possession and stuff like that is handled better, but it's just too jerky (and there's no aftertouch or replay system). Pity, because it could have been the best thing since Jackie Charlton.

1. The game is too slow and jerky.
2. You can easily score over the goalie's head.
3. Sadly, there's no replay or aftertouch option available.

1. There are nine varied teams (and therefore skill levels) to choose from.
2. Game length can be from two minutes to the full 90.
3. The players off the ball are intelligent enough to get into decent positions.
4. Two-player option is excellent fun to get stuck into.
5. The graphics are big and pretty detailed.
6. The occasional foul is fun to do as well.