WHILE at university I always fancied myself as a bit of a Gin King. I would stay in my room all day sometimes, hunched over a table with a bottle of Gin. That was before I started writing for, hic, excuse me, for Amiga Computing of course.

Gin King and Cribbage King are similar in that not only do they use a deck of cards but you have a choice of playing against one of seven opponents, each of varying skills and tactics.

During play you can even get a hint out of one of these fictional players. In fact, all the help begins to resemble the sort of features you might find on one of the myriad chess programs about. I suppose this isn’t really very surprising because the programs are written by those responsible for Chessmaster 2000 and the forthcoming 2100 version.

If you don’t understand the rules of either of these games then this is the perfect opportunity to learn with the on-screen help and a list of rules. There are seven players with varying skills and strategies to practice against, as well as to seek help from.

The graphics are excellently copied from an authentic pack of American playing cards. If you don’t believe it, a pack of the originals is included. These are the first cards I’ve seen on-screen that actually look like cards – they are literally square, probably because, unfortunately, both Cribbage Kind and Gin King run in NTSC.

Both games are OS friendly and will multi-task, but if you’re planning on running anything alongside them you’d better invest some dosh in chips of the ram variety.

A lot of thought has gone into these games, as you would expect from Software Toolworks. The accompanying manuals are very informative. In the case of cribbage one the game is broken down into the relevant statistics that pro players know off by heart.

Quite reasonable money for a good and potentially inexhaustibly entertaining game. Much better than killing aliens.