Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be a servant at Buckingham Palace, catering to the Royal Family's every whim? As a flunky, your ambition is to get the autograph of five members of the Royal Family by helping them out. For instance, Prince Charles wants his polo balls back, Sarah Ferguson wants you to paint freckles on her face, Prince Andrew wants a boat to play with, and Princess Di can't find her wig! The graphics are very blocky but are bright and cartoony, and most of the tasks are difficult to complete, with some very obscure objects required.

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Flying Shark
(Firebird, 1988)

Pilot a World War II biplane, the Flying Shark, over enemy territory, shooting 'planes, tanks and gun turrets. So there's nothing original about the plot of the game, which is another vertically scrolling shoot-'em-up that you've seen many times before. There are five levels, but you will need some seriously nifty reflexes, not to mention good eyesight, to make it that far. Yes, it's a rather difficult game, partly because there are so many 'planes on the screen at once, but mostly because the bullets are very difficult to see since they blend in with the background. The graphics are OK, but the music could be better, and so could the gameplay.

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Another one of those bizarre games! In this one, you must locate the brain within a maze and destroy it with a bomb. You control a little helicopter and you can pick up objects to use in certain sections of the maze. There's a lot of teleporting to be done and it's easy to get trapped, and you'll also need a pen and paper to note the codes for the teleport stations. The graphics are great, the music and sound effects are both wonderful, and it's a lot of fun to play as well, too, especially with all the silly messages that the programmer has left in the maze!

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Fly your Tornado fighter 'plane through four levels of airborne mayhem, shooting down formations of enemy jets and avoiding their bullets. Thankfully, unlike a lot of other shoot-'em-ups, the bullets are easy to see; they're red and orange to make them stand out from the background. At the end of each level is a huge target for you to destroy - a tank, a helicopter, a jet, or an airport control tower. There's no music, and the only sound effects you'll hear are when you're firing bullets, or you or an enemy 'plane is destroyed. However, the graphics are very nice, and it's a good game, albeit one that is slightly too easy.

See also: Q10 Tank Buster.

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You have just been appointed as manager of a 3rd Division football team, and your aim is to become the manager of a top team and win the 1st Division. Unlike most other football management games, you won't be managing the same team for the entire game; if you perform well enough, you'll attract the attention of other teams and can join them instead. The game is entirely text-based with no graphics whatsoever, but thankfully, there are no extended match highlights; instead, the results of every match are listed on the screen, one at a time. Unfortunately you can't choose tactics, and although there is a training option, it's really difficult to judge its effectiveness, thanks to a lack of detailed statistics for your players. This is a below average football management simulation.

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5

Yet another football management game in which you become the manager of any one of 96 teams and try to make your way from the 4th to the 1st Division. However, this simulation is rather more difficult than most others I've played. Your team consists of 11 players and 5 reserves, each of whom is a goalkeeper, defender, midfielder or forward, and is rated with a skill of between 1 and 5 - but as you play matches, their skills become worse, and even moving them to the reserves to rest them won't help. You can buy new players on the transfer market, but only one player is on the market each week, and it's nearly always not the type of player you want. The match highlights are quick, but that's not much of a bonus when the difficulty level is set much too high.

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Footballer of the Year
(Gremlin, 1986)

Can you win the coveted award of Footballer of the Year? If you want to, you'll have to show your worth and score goals - and lots of them. Starting in any of the four divisions, or the 'super league', you play matches and try to score goals by buying goal cards - and as you score more goals, you'll earn greater recognition, money, and maybe you'll be transferred to a better club. You can also buy incident cards, which might give you more money... but you might also lose money! This isn't a bad game by any means, but it didn't really grab my interest in the long term.

See also: Footballer of the Year 2.

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6

Once again, you're aiming to win the title of Footballer of the Year by scoring as many goals as you can in a season. The main differences here are in the scoring of goals - you choose you many goal cards you want to use, and you have to select from 21 plans. After viewing the blackboard tactics, you have to recreate this on the pitch and score. There are no incident cards, though - instead, they're replaced by a 'double or nothing' game where you answer footballing questions. This also forms the basis of some transfer offers, and unless you're a bit of a buff about football, getting them right is a matter of guesswork. This game would be better than the original, but the appalling graphics let it down very badly.

See also: Footballer of the Year.

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4

Grimesditch Rangers, a small and struggling football club, has somehow beaten many of the best teams and reached the final of the FA Cup. As the manager, this is your moment of glory - but with three days to go until the final match, everything that can go wrong does. Bills need to be paid; the kit needs to be washed and Ma Wallis at the laundry won't do it; there won't be a coach available to take the players to the match; your star player quits the team... and so it goes on. This is actually a text adventure created using GAC, and apparently it sold quite well. Unfortunately, it's a nightmare to play, thanks to an extremely unforgiving parser that demands you type an exact combination of several words, yet won't accept more obvious combinations.

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4

This was the original football management game, and it was written a long time ago. You start in the 4th Division and must make your way towards the top of the 1st Division (remember, this was before the Premier League was formed!). There aren't that many options available, but you can buy and sell players and change the names of your team and players, as well as deciding which players to use. Although the match highlights are awful, they don't last too long. This game is certainly showing its age, though, and a lot of other football management games have been released since then.

See also: Football Manager 2, Football Manager 3, Football Manager World Cup Edition.

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