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They said it couldn't be done. They were wrong. The title that ushered in a new era of 16-bit gaming has, belatedly, now reached the C64, and boy is it good! Not only does it (relatively) look, sound and play as well as its 16-bit parent, it has all the addictive qualities that have made the phrase 'Anyone for Speedball?' an everyday term down on the first floor, where sister mag the Ne lives.

Now, if you are sitting there looking a bit perplexed, I guess you missed out on all the fun. Speedball is the sport of the future. It's been said before, but a quick play makes it believable. As a game, it's a bit like five-a-side football, only the (metal) ball is carried.

At the start of a play, players are shown facing across an opening in the centre of the pitch. From this rises a dome, not completely unlike those in Xenon (another Bitmap Bros title, by the way!). This dome then spits the ball out in a random direction. From then on, it's a fast and furious scramble to score.

The man currently under control is a lighter colour than the rest of the team. As with most football-type games, the player you control is the one nearest the ball. Collecting the ball when at waist height is just a matter of running your player into it. When the ball is passing overhead, pressing fire makes the player jump up to catch it. Fire and direction makes the player lunge in that direction for the ball.

When the opposition has the ball, there are only two ways you can get it from them. You can wait and try to intercept it when they pass, or you can resort to violence. You too can be Brian Clough for a day as you swing your fists left, right and centre, punching out all and sundry, or as our East End barrow boy Mark Heley would put it, "Give 'em a kick-in".

Speedball is fast and playable, just like its Amiga counterpart. All the little gameplay quirks are there, like being able to punch out the opposing team's goalkeeper, making that much-needed late equaliser a little easier.

The graphics are almost as good as the Amiga version too. The only visual bit that has lost anything in conversion are the sprites - they're slightly blockier. Apart from that, everything is still in there, from the hand punching through the wall of steel in the loading sequence, to the pictures of each team.

Even the sound is the same. The in-game tune is the same as the Amiga, and I do mean the same.

The perfect downward conversion? Probably not, but the closest anyone has been yet.