When you're down on your luck, money's too tight to mention and you have to dig deep, deep down to reach that brass in pocket, what you need for kicks, failing a trip down Route 66*, is a tape with four games on it for the measly price of £3.99.

Alternative have been catering for the penniless masses with its 4 Most series for a while now and the latest bargain wonder is 4 Most Super Sports.

The first game on the pack is a one-on-one basket ball sim - you know, the sort of thing American boys play in tacky teen movies where they're battling it out for the only girl in high school who isn't wearing braces on her teeth.

Basket Master is pretty basic, with a tiny court and an unfathomable control system but there are some nifty touches such as close-up replays when a player slam dunks the ball and luvverly big sprites.

The main problem is that it's sometimes difficult to tell who's got the ball, without having to avert your eyes to the status panels at the bottom of the screen.

Kentucky Racing is based on one of the most surreal games on earth. It's a one-or two-player conversion of a classic fairground sideshow entertainment in which you have to move your horse along a track by throwing balls into holes in a sloping table.

Certain high-scoring holes make the horse move further along, the objective being to get your horse across the winning line first. You've got to admit, as concepts go it's in the seriously weird league.

It's fun at first but so repetitive that your brain'll be wearier than a very weary thing halfway through a nine-mile jog around Milton Keynes after just a couple of goes.

The C64 has been awash with so many overhead racing games recently that a driving game has to be stunning to impress me nowadays. Championship Sprint isn't and doesn't. Okay, the track editing option is excellent and very flexible, but I was sent to sleep by the driving bits, which, after all, are the crux of the game. One to three players get the chance to chug around the tiny weeny tracks in teeny weeny cars with no sense of speed, panic or excitement.

There's nothing I enjoy more than a lazy Sunday afternoon on the village green, watching a spot of cricket, clapping every half hour or so when something actually happens (do I detect just a hint of sarcasm there? - Ed). Let's face it, cricket is like slow-motion baseball and Cricket International doesn't exactly make in any livelier; the ball moves at the pace of an arthritic snail.

When you're batting you don't exactly have to make split second decisions about where you're going to whack the ball - there's almost time to get out your compass and set square and plot a course for it. While it's not bad as cricket sims go - the controls are weird but effective - it's still about as exciting as watching Dave chew his fingernails. And the graphics were obviously designed during the artist's minimalist period.

4 Most Super Sports may be cheap, but before you part with those four pounds (to get a penny back) think once, think twice, think save up a little bit more for a much better set of games.