Marauder (Hewson)

It's shockingly difficult. Even using your limited number of smart bombs only relieves the stress for a moment.

Skate Crazy (Gremlin)

Innovative skating affair. Nice graphics, reasonable depth and a sense of humour.

Hercules (Gremlin)

An attractive beat-'em-up but could do with some playability pepping.

Gutz (Ocean)

The graphics are OK, the gameplay's just about there, but you'll not be swallowing your joystick, or a spaceman for that matter, in desperation to play it.

Metal Army (Players)

Enjoyable but standard arcade game in the Deviants mould.

Arcticfox (Electronic Arts)

Quite a disappointing conversion. It fails to hold the interest.

On Cue (Mastertronic)

An unexceptional snooker/pool simulation, but the game designer makes it value for money.

Droids (Mastertronic Added Dimension)

Incredibly disappointing arcade game based on the Star Wars cartoon.

Wizard Warz (Go)

Complex, entertaining and nice-looking D&D simulation.

Shadow Skimmer (The Edge)

Shadow Skimmer doesn't retain all its initial charm, but it's worth seeing nonetheless.

FA Cup Football (Virgin)

Worthy but dull simulation of management tactics in the FA Cup contest.

Xecutor (Cybadyne)

This is excellent... A vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up with excellent graphics.

Nineteen Part 1: Boot Camp (Cascade)

Considering that each of the sub sections is better than many a full-price game, you can't beat 19 for value. If you don't mind the inevitable wait for the multiload, it's a corker.

Powerama (Powerhouse)

Excellent budget vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up. I can't see anyone regretting investing here.

Dark Side (Incentive)

Unmissable... If Incentive's Freescape games continue to improve at this rate, they'll soon come up with something absolutely awesome.

The Race Against Time (Codemasters)

A fairly uninteresting charity race game. Buy if you're feeling nice.

Street Sports Basketball (Epyx)

A flashy program which doesn't satisfy as either a simulation or an arcade exercise.

Impossible Mission (US Gold)

Don't miss this one. The animation is fine and the background graphics are designed to keep colour clash to a minimum.

The Eidolon (Activision)

Apart from the annoying multi-load, well worth a bash.

Micromate (Lerm)

A useful utility package for a useless bit of hardware.

Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (The Essential Myth)

Excellent adventure, best played in the middle of the night to absorb the atmosphere.

Cerius (Atlantis)

One of the best budget titles I've seen, and if it were completely original it would deserve a great big floppy kiss.

Skelvullyn Twine (8th Day)

Undoubtedly the best budget adventure I have seen in a long time.

Football Manager 2 (Addictive Games)

An improvement on a legendary game. It still looks a little tatty but plays brilliantly.

Mickey Mouse (Gremlin)

Sound and maybe simplicity aside, this is a pretty strong game with very high quality graphics - Gremlin has tried hard on this one.