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Personally, I'd just as soon walk up to Gary Chilcott, give him a large stick and call him a big fat sissy-pants, as try and play in a game of rugby. Either way, I'd end up with a face looking like a plate of mashed potato that's been left in the rain for rather too long. Much better to make a nice cup of tea, settle down in front of the telly and watch Chilcott and his beefy pals transform each other from headcases to hospital cases.

The alternative is to get stuck into Domark's latest - Rugby: The World Cup, which, we're being told, will be to rugby what Kick Off was to soccer. This ever-so-slightly-dubious claim begs two questions: a) Is it really in the same league as Kick Off? and b) Is it the first C64 rugby game that's actually any good?

The answers, perhaps a little predictably, are no and yes. No, because it's not nearly such good fun as Kick Off, and yes, because it's about four tries and five penalties better than any rugger game we've ever seen (admittedly, they've been desperately thin on the ground).

I don't want to go on about Kick Off but the fact of the matter is that these are unavoidably similar games. The view is straight down overhead style, there's a huge scanner there so you can see the whole pitch, it's reasonably quick and it's not at all easy to win games. Essentially, Domark have done to Kick Off what William Webb-Ellis did to soccer (he's the boy at Rugby School who ran with the ball, triv-chums).

If you're familiar with the rules of rugby you'll be quite at home here. Programming team Walking Circles have incorporated scrums, line-outs, tries, offsides and conversions in a game which captures the frantic flavour of the sport admirably. The only things that seem to be missing are the infringements and penalties you can fall foul of in the real game. But these would have been impossible to get just right.

Each man running with the ball can leg it for the touch-line until he bumps into an opposing player. Then it's scrum down, and all you have to do to win the scrum is waggle that joystick like a madman; an exercise which can be right old pain until you've got the measure of it. But to really get things going, pass the ball (backwards) or kick it (forwards) and on the game goes until - hurrah! - you've scored a try. This is not as easy as it sounds because the controls take a lot of getting used to and opposition teams are definitely no monkeys (gorillas, maybe).

Kicking the conversion is just a matter of stopping a speedy cursor in front of the goalposts as it swings hastily from left to right. The graphics on this tiny section aren't all they might be but the effect is convincing enough, for all of that.

If the opposing team is on the attack, you just need to run your closest player into the attacker's way to cause a scrum-down or force a pass. Watch out though; he can dodge you it he's quick enough. (If he's an All Black, he's quick,)

All the teams for the recent and really quite fab World Cup, are featured, so you can take your chances against the All Blacks, the Kiwis or the Western Samoans in a single game or full tournament. Or if you'd like to play a more exotic team, the choice extends to Fiji, Japan, Wales, USA, Canada, Argentina and Romania (and I might have missed a few). As is often the case with such games though, the best way to play is against a pal - the CF office was blue with distinctly rugby flavoured language as certain members of the team attempted to out-do one another.

For a game that moves so quickly, the graphics are impressively slick. There's hardly any flicker and none of the blobs which unaccountably appeared in Kick Off. When it comes to audio quality however, what you get is disappointingly basic. The soundtrack is limited to unconvincing renditions of bouncing balls and referees whistling. It's not much of an event.

But that's a minor quibble against a game that's really heaps of fun. All right, so it's not going to sway you if you really hate rugby anyway. But personally, I'd much rather tackle this, than spend 80 minutes of a freezing Sunday morning facing up to 15 head-crunching nut-cases. Or is that nut-crunching headcases?

1. Fiddly controls, poor sound effects.

1. As true a rugger game as we've ever seen - only a couple of real game features have been missed.
2. Sticks to the World Cup formula, with plenty of opposition to tackle - a wide choice of teams.
3. Excellent fun as a two-player game.
4. Slick graphics, and a real feeling of speed.
5. Good documentation and well presented throughout.
6. The special graphics included for conversions and the like are well designed.
7. Fairly easy to get into and addictive into the bargain.