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This is a simulation of a two player basketball game featuring four different levels of play. The loading screen looks great, and sadly, it's the last thing that does. The game is played on a so-called 3D court by two very flickery and jerky blockmen. Mind you, it took me about half an hour to fathom out how to get the menu to work from the instructions given in order to get to that stage!

According to the blurb, the program actually represents the playing characteristics of two wellknown American players, and rambles on about tactics and offences and variations in play. To be fair, you can set it up for a one or two player game, and in addition to keyboard, there are Sinclair and Kempston joystick options.

In the final analysis, the players are so badly represented, it's difficult to see which has the ball as a result of attribute problems and flicker, and their response to control is poor. Even on the pro level, where a referee interjects every ten seconds, play is simple and rapidly becomes boring.

Given the excellence of Ultimate's animation techniques, this could have been really good. As it is, it has all the technical elegance of a poor £1 .99 game and thus cannot be recommended at any price. As Ariolasoft illustrate the sleeve with screen shots from the Commodore 64 version, are we to presume that they too recognise its limitations?

D.M.