"Woor, Saint, wossis sen? Iss one o'vese compu'er games, innit? 'Ow much wad'll we be gettin' for it, then?"
    Whatever they're getting, it can't be enough. Lan St John and Jimmy Greaves as well as being cracking footballers (back in the '60s and '70s when I was a mere lad) are possibly the two greatest Britons of the current age. With wit, wisdom and more casual jumpers than you'd see in a series-full of A Question Of Sport, they shine as beacons of sanity in an area with, let's be frank, norralot of competition. Bob Wilson? Nick 'It's Not A Toupee' Owen? Or even that famous Yorkshire hamlet, Elton Welsby? Pah!
    So it's a shame to report that the lads have by no means "done great" with this computer game equivalent. For one thing, there isn't a jumper to be seen. And Saint doesn't chuckle merrily at Jim's witticisms once. No jokes about Hartlepool, or Scottish goalkeepers. In fact, the only things that connect this game with either The Saint or Greavsie are the rather dodgy digitised pics of them that crop up throughout the game. Otherwise, it's just another two-bit footie quiz game.
    Now, I hear you murmur with righteous Indignation, the Speccy market hasn't exactly been overwhelmed by a tidal wave of two-bit footie quiz games, or even one-bit ones. It's just that, after playing Saint And Greavsie, it rather feels as though it has. This is a football quiz that, while moderately well programmed and reasonably challenging, so lacks variety that you find yourself nodding off before the game is even half way through.
    So, having chosen your team (say, Maidstone Utd) and your captain (say, M Berkmann), you advance to the question-answering bit. Like Triv, this is fab if there are lots of you huddling around the warm Speccy as the cold winter nights draw in, but if you're on your own there's little incentive. The winner is the player who gets the most points, and if you're the only player you're the winner before you've started. Great.
    Assuming you have chosen the 'easy' questions, you now kick off. Each question represents a match, and there are three sorts you can get - Home, Away and Derby. Home questions score just one point, and these are, in theory, the easier. Away score two, and are usually about football in the '60s and '70s (easy for me, hard for most YS readers). Derby questions are about football trivia, score three points, and are often actually the easiest of the lot. Which sort of question you get is decided by a bar graph on the screen that leaps up and down. Press fire and it stops, and elsewhere on the screen your ball alights on one of the three question types.
    So, a question comes up. Who scored six goals against Sunderland in the 1960s? To whom did Leeds sell goalkeeper Gary Sprake? (Don't ask me. By the way - I got these two wrong.) Get one right and you may be given the opportunity to save a penalty for a bonus point (this, like all such sub-games, is impossible at first and a pushover when you've worked out how to do it).
    And, er, that's it. There's a short game (21 matches) and a long game (42 matches) but that's all the choice you really get. What makes me suspect that this game was conceived and programmed in a hurry is that, when you finally finish this marathon (42 matches may not sound many but try playing 'em), the game then tells you that the team which came second actually won - even though it scored fewer than half the points you did. Grr. Anyone tried playtesting in Grandslam?
    No, this isn't really up to scratch. At the end of the day, Brian... er, it gets dark. Really, only footie quiz freaks should invest - especially if they want to know who really did score six goals for West Ham against Sunderland in the 1960s...

Ratings given by other magazines

3/10

Info supplied by the SPOT*ON database