Pub Games

Pub Games is a multiplayer sports compilation developed by Dollarsoft and published by Alligata Software in 1986 . The game simulates a night at the British pub, collecting seven traditional bar games: Darts, Bar Billiards, Dominoes, Table Football (foosball), Pontoon (Blackjack), Poker, and Skittles . Two modes are available: Practice Mode lets you play any game in any order; "Full Pub Games Run" takes you through all seven events sequentially, with each game awarding £1 to the winner—the player with the most money at the end wins . Table Football is the only game supporting simultaneous two-player action; all others are turn-based "hot seat" affairs . A complete run takes approximately two hours .

ZX Spectrum

Released in 1986 by Alligata for 48K models, programmed by Richard Stevenson and David Wright (as Dollarsoft) . The Spectrum version is strictly a cassette release with no disk option . Loading times are notorious: approximately 29 minutes for the original Alligata release and over 30 minutes for the Prism Leisure re-release—among the longest on the platform . A clever feature allows loading events separately without the main program, but this places you in practice mode with randomized player names . In Darts, the cursor follows a predictable pattern and the entire dartboard is visible at once . Microhobby magazine gave Originality 70%, Graphics 60%, Movement 60%, Sound 50%, Difficulty 70%, and Addiction 80% . User ratings average 5.5/10 on Spectrum Computing . A mediocre compilation burdened by extreme loading times .