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Sacre Bleu! C'est le new game from Activision Tour De France. Avec beaucoup d'anticipation je popped it dans la cassette player and waited for it to load.

Alors, there are two modes of play, practice and competition. The only difference as far as I could see was that in competition mode up to six people can play (not all at the same time) and each player can choose to represent the country of their choice. Having got that out of the way (There's a lot of messing around before you actually get started), you must decide whether you want to take a crack at the whole tour, or selected stages (etapes). Each stage has to be loaded from tape as you come to it, which is somewhat tedious, but inevitable in any game which occupies more memory than the C64 has to offer.

Before you get pedalling,you first have to choose a bike/jersey combination. This affects such properties as cornering ability, gear ratio, top speed, etc. Finally, you get a chance to ride the damn thing.

Graphically, it looks pretty good. You are presented with an aerial view of the French countryside, complete with houses, waving fans, trees, advertisement hoardings, road and cyclist.

Pedalling is accomplished in the standard manner of wiggling the joystick back and forth like a maniac. If this embarrasses you, use the keyboard instead. To turn you must use the joystick with the fire button depressed which means you can't pedal at the same time. Any deviation from the narrow winding road results in a crash and you have to jump back on and build up speed again.

Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? I think there are three things wrong. It's not fast enough. You bust a gut trying to build up speed, only to dawdle to a virtual standstill whilst manoeuvring. There isn't enough difference between the sixteen stages to warrant their inclusion and the messing about with loading it involves. Lastly there's no competition. You're all on your tod, and racing against the clock is no competition. C'est un shame, mais c'est la vie, je suppose.