Jocky Wilson's Darts Challenge

Flushed with the success of winning the Embassy World Darts Championship Jocky Wilson has gone and got himself a darts game, Jocky Wilson's Darts Challenge (54%) courtesy of Zeppelin Games. It's one of theose games where all you do is aim the wobbling dart somewhere near the place you want it to go and hope for the best. You would have thought a beer drinking tournament would have been included but alas all you get is the screen where you throw the dart and an aerial view of some beer belly throwing a dart at the board. It's a fair simulation and I'm sure fans of the sport will rush out to buy it.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Another trip to Lowprice Lane with the king of the skinflints, Marcus Berkmann!

Zeppelin Games
£1.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

Any sport in which the participants are generally fat, ugly and full of beer is my sort of sport, and personally I do like a game of 'arrers.' Spec-chums seem to as well, 'cos about eight billion darts sims have come out over the years, the latest of which appears with a photo of Jocky Wilson on the front. And as we all know, there's no one fatter, uglier or fuller of beer than Jocky.

Appropriately this one's on the Zeppelin label, since that is the form of air transport that Jocky most resembles, and it's really rather fun. Like the real thing there's actually some skill required here, as you try and bung in treble twenty after treble twenty, and inevitably score three.

You can play tournament (up to four players and great fun), head-to-head (useful to have someone else to play this with) or round the clock, which is a race against time. It's not too easy to see where young Jocky fits into it all, but so what? It's good fun anyway, with excellent graphics and well thought out gameplay. Only the shockingly bad and incomprehensible instructions let it down.

Label: Zeppelin
Author: In-house
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Eee. Take a sup o'yer Tetley's and waddle up t'oche and sling yer arras, lad. Magic. The thought of spending any time at all playing a game based on the beery antics of the fattest men in the country (whether they be Members - fyak - of the British Empire or not) didn't do much to excite me.

So imagine my disgust to find that Jocky Wilson's Darts Challenge isn't a dreadful flask of cat squirt after all. In fact it's very good indeed.

There are three stages of the game; Head to Head is for two players, each trying to score 501 before the other. Round the Clock speaks for itself really - you must try to work your way from numbers 1 to 20 in the shortest possible time. The Championship, though, is by far the most exciting, where you play against a host of wittily monickered opponents. Defeat them all and you can take a crack at the "big" man himself... Jocky Wilsonnnnn!

Although the different stages require different strategies, the core of the game is how realistically the "arras" are "bunged". Obviously a degree of wobblyness has had to be incorporated - when was the last time you saw a darts player with a perfectly steady arm? Here we have to live with a sort of perpetual drift which causes your ghost-like dart to move in circular motions at the time. Not a bad solution to the problem, although I'd like to think that in real life I could hold myself a little bit more steady than this. Still, if all the fun of the sport is to be captured, I guess all the effects of the beer must be included too.

Once you've thrown your darts it's the turn of the machine. You get a plan view of the oche and board with an extremely unrealistically slim darts player who regularly throws straight 180s.

The more successful you are, the tougher your opponents become, throwing darts with astonishing accuracy.

Obviously I never managed to challenge The Jock himself, but I was surprised quite how addictive I found this game. Even though I loathe and despise darts in every form, Jocky W had me reasonably enthralled for a lengthy period. You are thankfully spared all the skull splittingly dull maths involved, as the computer tells you how many you scored, how many you need etc. The only thing it doesn't do is suggest which shot you should aim for. Since I'm especially incontinent (eh - GT) when it comes to getting to grips with figures (arf, arf - AS) this would have been a bit of a boon, but I'm sure it would only be of use in especially dense players.

So there we are then. Corpulent Darts Star in Successful Licence Shock. A super bargain. Smashing. Lovely.

C64, Spectrum: £2.99

Darts games have appeared regularly over the last couple of years, and seemed to have hit the heights with Mastertronic's 180. However, undaunted by numerous predecessors, Zeppelin continue the genre and have released their product with the dubious blessing of sporting megastar Jocky Wilson.

So how does this latest oche simulator shape up? Throwing darts is achieved in a similar way to previous offerings, whereby a wobbling dart hovers in front of the board and is released by pressing the fire button. Although this proves quite tricky at first, it does introduce the correct amount of randomness into shots: the darts can be grouped easily, but a 180 is still difficult to achieve.

Normal "501 down" rules apply and the program supports a two player head-to-head, a solo player competition against computer opponents and also "round the clock" darts, competing against a timer.

Certainly a very capable rendition of the game, JWDC's only drawback is that it's all been seen before. Great if there isn't one in the collection, but otherwise it hits the wire.