PC CD-ROM minimum system requirements: 486DX4/100mhz (Pentium required for SVGA mode); 8MB RAM; 55MB hard disk space; DOS 5.0; Double speed CD-ROM drive; VGA. £29.99
IF you are among the hordes suffering from withdrawal symptoms after the Centennial Games in Atlanta, help may be at hand. Instead of spending the night in front of your television watching someone else going for gold, you can now crank up the PC and play a part yourself.
Although this is an officially licensed product, none of your opponents are "real" - not that this makes much of a difference: after all, it's the taking part that counts, not who takes part. Olympic Games, true to its origins, includes some of the less glamorous of world sports such as fencing, skeet shooting and archery - as well as the more traditional track and field events like the 100 metres, pole vault and javelin.
Many simulations of athletic events are very poor. Olympic Games, on the other hand, is "refreshingly good.
You'll need lightning-fast finger reflexes and timing. The faster you can work those fingers on the keyboard the better your athlete will perform whether it be swimming, weightlifting or running. Some of the other events such as discus will also require an additional skill. To release this projectile at its optimum time and angle you have to hit an "action" with tremendous precision to achieve the required standard.
While the Olympic mode of gameplay is the standard for this game, there are also Arcade, Practice and Challenge. Practice is self explanatory but in Arcade mode the idea is to collect as many points as possible from 14 selected events. There is the added pitfall of only having three lives. In Challenge mode you choose the number of events and compete with up to seven players (four of whom can be human) - again, the idea is to accumulate the most points. In Olympic the objective is, as one would expect, to collect as many medals as possible.
After all the medal ceremonies are over, Olympic Games is probably the best of this type of game around but, in fairness, it isn't up against much. One source of annoyance is the amount of work required to navigate through the different menus and this is not made any easier by information in the instruction manual which can easily mislead.
Graphics: 81%, Sound: 79%, Gameplay: 76%