These days, it's almost a must to have your sport simulation endorsed by a popular personality. Gazza has had his name on football games, while Jack Nicklaus and Nick Faldo games are also available. The latest sports personality to have his name featured on a computer simulation isn't quite as well known as the aforementioned stars, but his achievements, though, are in fact near-legendary.

Like a rubber ball
Jahangir Khan is the world's highest-ranking squash player, he has won all the major squash titles as well as remained undefeated for over 500 international matches that he's played in the last six years. Quite a feat, which is unrivaled in any sport.

Now you can take on the role of the number one player in Krisalis' simulation. You can either play in a knockout championship between 32 players for the World Cup, or work your way up the club league ladder, improving your skills as you go.

Options for various rule implementations are available, including changing the serving rules, setting the total number of games and opting for the use of different grades of ball. You can practise a match at any time, or just watch the computer players battle it out to try and works out their various tactics before you go up against them.

Back against the wall, NOW!
The game is played on an isometric 3D court, starting with the players having to choose 'rough or smooth' to elect a server. At the end of the game, the winner gets to improve his speed, fitness or touch skills, ready for the next, and arguably more difficult, opponent.

There aren't many squash simulations found on home computers, in fact the last noticeable effort in fact Jonah Barrington's Squash which was many, many years ago. This is probably due to the complications in calculating the physics for a ball as well as two players bouncing around a court in three dimensions.

Krisalis have managed to come up with a fair interpretation of the sport, combining well drawn, colourful graphics which move around the screen smoothly with well-sampled, realistic squash court sounds to create the atmosphere of a real match.

Occasionally, the perspective is a little off putting, making you run the wrong way at the crucial moment and the timing of the shots is pretty tight, which means you will have to get a lot of practice in before you can make it through to the top of the league or into the later stages of the cup.

As a two-player game, Jahangir Khan is quite a laugh, since both players have their quirks your opponent is a perfectly-positioned computer drone who seems to be able to reach even the trickiest of shots!

If you're a fan of the sport, this may be just the thing to work out your energy if you can't make it to the sport centre. If you're new to the game of squash, then ttry this little simulation anyway - it could start a new interest.

How ironic to find a sport which requires so much physical effort simulated in a medium which requires so little. Home computer squash has been around since the days of those simplistic hand-held units - it was fun then and it's no less enjoyable in its new form.

The world championship in Jahangir Khan's World Championship Squash is only one half of the story. It's advisable to play the Club Tournament option and attempt to win the league before taking on the world's finest.

It takes a little while to get to grips with the perspective, not to mention the standard control mode (the simplified version is a little too simplistic for its own good), bu then it's simply a matter of reacting fast enough to enjoy high-speed rallies punctuated by a devious soft shot or nine. And right smashing it feels too.

Unsurprisingly, Jahangir's Squash is best enjoyed when playing against a second human-controlled player. Even so, the computer-controlled opponent does play a believable and challenging game. And, just like the great man himself, his computer squash plays by the rules.

There's nothing actually wrong with Jahangir's Squash. Well, unless you object to the lack of female players or international Tournaments so you can mimic Jahangir's uncanny success, that is.

What Jahangir's Squash does it does very well and as such it offers a decent, viable alternative to the teaming mass of football simulations available. I mean, what else is there to be done with squash that could possibly make it any more interesting?

There's something worrying about a game in which the sole aim is literally to thrash the ball against a wall more times than your opponent. Played by flabby office workers and old school types for whom one more run on the squash ladder is one step nearer the boardroom, it is a game singularly without glamour.

That said, Jahangir Khan hasn't done too badly and is regarded as the Steve Davis of squash. With six world championships and nine successive British Open titles under his belt, he only loses in leap years or when he plays with the racket held between the smallest toes of his left foot. It may well come as a shock to him then when he learns that he has recently lost forty on the trot in the inaugural CU Amiga Amateur Challenge League. Laughed off the court and out of the showers his name is now synonymous with failure, thanks to some dubious ball bounces.

You can imagine the problem of programming a game of squash when you have to show the ball bouncing off four different walls at various times. Krisalis have chosen to show the game from above at an angle rather than looking straight down on the court which would have made it difficult to ascertain height or depth.

It's a compromise which doesn't work. When you add to that the small, poorly animated figures and their seeming lack of ability to play a variety of strokes (or even a backhand) then you begin to understand that JK's Squash doesn't really cut it as a sports simulation.

There's plenty of options which cover league and championship play. You can play with different balls, change the time of matches, and display player statistics. However, no amount of frills, or intermediary digitised pictures, can disguise the limitations at work here.