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After a long wait, the subject of our A Game is Born series is here - fresh-faced, eager and ready for review. Does it live up to expectation? Does it fulfil the original spec? Does it make the tea? Read on...

Stormball is set in an unspecified time in the future, and simulates a fictitious sport that somewhat resembles a fictitious sport that somewhat resembles hockey. It's played on a pitch with two halves, one half per player, and each game is vided into four quarters. At the beginning of each quarter, the ball drops into the centre of the pitch and is propelled towards one of the players. He must then catch it with his baton.

This player now has a limited amount of time - called the Timeout period - to return the ball into the other player's half. You do this by varying the power of your shot. This is indicated by the rising bar graph in the scoreline area. Press the Fire button and the bar rises. Release the Fire button when the bar shows the strength of shot you want and the ball is instantly released into the playing arena.

The aim of the game is to make the ball pass over as many scoring tiles on the pitch as you possibly can before the other player can catch it. These may be high score tiles, which give you from ten to 300 points, x2 Multipliers, or Bonus tiles. These enable you to blast your opponent or paralyse him temporarily. There are other less helpful ones - barrier squares, for instance, deflect the ball and null squares zero your score for that throw.

You can also change virtually all the game's parameters - the Time-out period, the length of the quarters and so on. You can practise against a droid, vary its skill to suit your own abilities - even design your own pitches. If you get really cocky and beat all the computer's opponents there's always the opportunity to link up your ST with friends via the serial port.

The Stormball arena is viewed from a position just behind your player, and the 3D effect works well. When you turn left and right, the pitch moves smoothly and fairly rapidly. Perspective is fine, and often the ball shrinks to a tiny dot with only the bonus scores rising in the distance to remind you of where it is. Fortunately, there's also a huge arrow that follows it around all the time. The players are slightly wooden though - everything floats above the pitch so they just glide about. A cop-out graphically, perhaps, but it's justified by the futuristic setting. The sound is nothing special either - no samples and only a few sound-chip tunes and effects.

It's doubtful whether Stormball has enough variety to keep you really interested after the first few games. The betting options and the ability to improve the rank of your character may help, as may the pitch editor, but in the end there just doesn't seem to be enough here to generate that important just-one-more-go feeling. You can't deny that the overall presentation, programming and design are top-notch - it's just that the gameplay seems to be lacking. A game is born, but it's unlikely to grow up.