Here it is at last... the long awaited Hyper Sports. The game was a follow up to the huge arcade (and much copied) hit Track and Field. There is the same sort of scoring and the same gameplay still applies. In each event you have a certain target which you have to reach to qualify. If you don't meet this requirement then your game will end, if, on the other hand, you do then you'll auto-matically move on to the next event.

Hyper Sports is a direct copy from the arcade game barring only one aspect, the pole vault-ing event. Why this has happened I don’t know but still, there are Six of the original events there and they are copied in their entirety.

The game kicks off with an exhausting freestyle swimming event. This is similar in style to the 110 metre hurdles in Track and Field. You have to belt along by hurling your joystick from side to side and when the prompt 'breathe' comes up press the fire button. Don't leave it too long to press fire otherwise your man will slow up completely and don’t press the fire button when your mans head is under water because, not un-surprisingly, this causes him to cough and splutter and slow up for ages (enough to cost you the race).

Once the swimming is over it’s time to go outside for the skeet shooting. Your man sits at the bottom centre of the screen with a doubled barreled shotgun in his hand. He aims this gun automatically and this is repres-ented by two floating boxes on screen. As the skeets move through it press left or right to fire one of the barrels. If you qualify then you get a wink and a grin from your man, if you don’t then he gives you a sour look. This isn’t too hard or taxing and gives you a little rest to summon enough strength to tackle... The horse vaulting.

This is a real toughie despite the automatic run up to the springboard. When you reach it the skill takes over - press fire when you do and he bounces onto the horse, wait until he's doing a horizontal hand stand then press fire button again and hurl the joy-stick around the room. This is a really tricky event and takes quite a bit of practice to be able to qualify regularly.

After that spot of bother comes the nice and relaxing archery event. Pick your wind speed with the fire button and you’re off. A target is winched down the screen and you have to decide when to release your arrow and at what angle it should be shot at. It all sounds really complex but is in fact a doddle to do.

After the Robin Hood impersonation Comes the triple jump, yet another event to give you a coronary. Speed up to the scratch line (forget that your wrist is being held together by two ligaments and a bit of stringy flesh) and press fire button trying to get as near to 45 degrees as possible. Repeat twice for the step and the jump. It's quite tricky getting the timing but once mastered some huge jumps are easy to accomplish.

The final event is the weight-lifting. Choose the weight you want to tackle by moving the joystick left or right and then press fire, To lift the weight try to mash the joystick until the weightlifter flashes. When he does press fire, this 'snatches' the weight above his head. Keep on pummeling the stick until the judges lights all go white. If they do then it’s a successful lift. Once that is over it’s back to the swimming again only this time all the qualifying targets have been upped, sapping even more of your rapidly diminishing strength.

Another thing, which concerns more the trials of being a reviewer, was when Julian was writing this review. Whanging the thing out at 'hold the front page' speeds on an NEC terminal he decided to upload into the Apricot system.

Being in such haste he pressed ONE wrong button and instead of a prompt of some sort the NEC killed the file, all 6K of it. The following superfluous stream of curses made even Lloyd cringe behind his Hermes 1922 typewriter. Anyway, on with you really want to read.

Firstly there is the lack of a power bar. Although being of no real use in the game I find it useful to gauge how well you're doing. There's also no multi-player option and all of the little 'cheats' and 'bugs' are missing.

These quibbles aside, Imagine have done a truly wonderful job on the graphics and sound - a real megatune while its loading and tankings of jingles and effects during the game make it one of the best sounding games around.

The graphics on all screens are identical to the arcade version and the game, although being slightly harder than the coin-op original, is really challenging and fun. Superb stuff Imagine, I can't wait or Yie Ar Kung Fu.

Overall presentation is also superb with several authentic arcade style touches and in fact the graphics are nearly arcade perfect with high definition and use of colour (although I am not too impressed with the standard of animation when compared next to, say, Summer Games II).

Sound is consistently good throughout the game and I would say it is better than that of the original arcade game (there isn't any speech in this version unfortunelately). I am disappointed that there isn't a multi-player option as the two player competitive element is lost.

Hyper Sports has certainly revitalised my interest in frantic joystick pounding and is worthy of the success it will gain.