No no, Mr Bond, we expect you to answer tricky questions about Australia

What's the link between states of Australia, Bond movie locations and 1950s rock and roll songs? A clue? Okay, this is a review of a game called Switchquiz - think about it, the answer's in the title.

In the 1980s, Trivial Pursuit sets instantly robbed parties everywhere of communication, variation and interest, replacing the buzz and laughter, loud music and the guzzling of gallons of lemonade with the homogenised sounds of rolling dice, arguing couples and cries of "Quiet now, this one's for a pie." The pubs fell next, with crowds of folk hanging around Give Us A Break machines, all shouting, "A it's A! No B! D maybe!" while knocking back pints of Tizer and leering at members of the opposite sex. And now of course, the inevitable computer trivia games are upon us.

There's already a CD32 version of Trivial Pursuit, but Switchquiz is different because you need additional hardware. For your fairly large wad of cash, you get a connector box that plugs into the parallel port and links up your handsets to the Amiga. The answer boxes are blast plastic decorated with four buttons and a sticker marking them A, B, C and D, and they look exactly like they were made in someone's kitchen, which presumably they were.

However, on the good side the wires are long enough and the game supports the second disk drive, so once you've slammed in the boot and question disks, there's no disk swapping. You can alter the time limit on each question, the number of points needed to win and whether the correct answer is flashed up after guessing, but unfortunately not the names, so everyone gets to be plain old Player One or whatever.

Curiously for a game that places four buttons in your hand, you've got to use the mouse to start the game and pick the number of players. So what's wrong with A for one player and D for four? And that's another thing - a one player game option? Doesn't that sound like living well into the borders of Sadshire?

The questions come up in teensy letters and everyone races to get the answer right before time runs out. This is actually quite fun first time round, but every time someone gets the answer right, you're, o-ho rewarded by a sample of TV's famous Mike Smash saying, "Quiz-tastic, mate," which starts to grate after the third time, forcing you to play any subsequent games in silence.

Odd things happen the more you play it. Even though there are, as they say, 'over 1000' questions on the disk, you frequently get the same question asked twice in one game. To be fair, the possible answers are differently ordered each time, which leads to everyone waiting hawk-like for the correct one to appear with a leisurely ping.

The greatest fault is the limited range of questions. Whoever set them obviously has a factbook on the states of Australia and a worrying tendency towards '50s music. Still, further disks are promised, so maybe we'll get a question master with a more comprehensive library, eh? But even that won't help the alarming lack of excitement in the game. Considering it's the first person to get 75 points to be declared the winner, there's a distinct lack of flashing lights or hooters as you pass 25, or 50, or whatever. And nothing happens when you win a game, beyond a message saying: "Player X wins". Bah. Switchsoft reckon they'll sell their game to pubs and clubs across the country - this mouldy old presentation does them no favours at all.

So how many games did we play before we all got bored? Five, which works out at over seven quid a game. Even the forthcoming sports and trivia data disks won't draw us back as it's the incredible dullness of the presentation that does the most damage. Who wants to crane forward to read tiny writing? It's the psychologically-designed flashing lights and tweety sounds that trap people on pub machines. Fact.

If you are interested in buying Switchquiz, then Switchsoft can be contacted at 26 Ridgeway, Darlington, Co. Durham DL3 0SF.

Uppers: It's a four player game, there's no doubt who got the answer first and as long as Switchsoft keep pumping out questions it's expandable.

Downers: It's expensive, the headsets are a bit Heath Robinson [Wilf Lunn, more like! - Ed] and the questions are too small on the screen, and frequently repeat during a game. Oh, and that bloody "Quiztastic, mate" sample freaks me out.

A nice try at doing something different with the Amiga, but the hardware makes it too expensive and the relatively few questions don't justify the cost. If you're prepared to overlook the shoddy presentation and you think the data disks will materialise, then by all means consider it; there's certainly nothing else like it. If they could only link the hardware to the professionalism of the Trivial Pursuit game, eh?