While kids in the 80s would concoct all manner of excuses why their homework was late, teachers were almost certainly aware that the real culprit behind the laxness was Chuckie Egg or Jet Set Willy. For me, my own education killer was Boulder Dash, or Repton, as it was known on the Acorn Electron, which I owned at the time (only the posh kids in our town got Commodore 64s).

For the benefit of those who spent their childhoods doing schoolwork, the object of the game was to steer your little critter around a labyrinth full of rocks, collecting diamonds and other booty along the way, while fighting off hoards of nasty beasties. Whether you’re a fan of the original or a newcomer to the game, the highly addictive Boulder Dash provides a faithful recreation of the game that is one of the very few computer games ever to be ported from home computers to arcades (as opposed to the other way around). Be warned though, you may have to start plundering your little book of excuses for not turning up to work again.

I've been playing Vice City on the PS2 a lot recently. What surprises me most is that even though it was released in 2002, the graphics and game play are still pretty impressive. The next version, GTA IV, will only be released on October 16, 2007, on Xbox first, and rumors already claim it will be an MMO, in what we can only imagine as a humongous gunfest.

There's still a couple of months to wait until this release and in the meantine I suggest going back to the original 1997 release, Grand Theft Auto. Although this game only had an overhead view and rather poor graphics you could wander freely around the city and pick your missions. There were no cut scenes and you accessed missions from ringing phone booths or by entering a car. You had to follow particular instructions which were liable to change at any given time. Like in recent releases, you could cruise around the city, but ramming other cars or killing policemen gave you a significant number of points. You could use police bribes (the police-badge stars in the latest version), go on killing frenzies (rampage) and pick a "Get outta jail" card to use when you were arrested. Essentially, the whole principal of the game was the same as it is now. Any true fan of the recent editions of GTA is guaranteed to find some enjoyment in good ol' Liberty City as it used to be in its first incarnation.

To coincide with the release of Sid Meier's Railroads, the original Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon (SMRT), straight from 1990, has now been made freely available in full. The game takes you back to the 19th century where you create your own transportation empire by building railroads, buying new trains and setting up connections between cities.

Those of you who are worried about compatibility: fear not. You won't have to access DOS to play the game because it features its very own DOS Box. Original gamers of SMRT, will fondly appreciate the minimalistic graphics, midi country music, pixelized area maps, but most of all, the crux of the whole series, managing your money and assets. You start off with a million dollars (of which you'll have to pay back $500,000) and must first choose a good location, build a station and then start laying tracks. You'll soon become familiar with all the varieties of locomotives, like the Norris, Crocodile or Ten-Wheeler. The game really starts to get addictive when you see your network of railroads reach more and more cities and your income start to rise. Depending on the level of difficulty you choose, you'll also come across rough competition and you'll have to protect your assets from truly aggressive entrepreneurs.

Even though the graphics don't compare to what you'll find in the latest release, Sid Meier's Railroads, the simulation aspect of Railroad Tycoon is as much thrilling now as it was 10 year ago. All aboard!

She may now have retired, but Mavis Beacon is still fondly remembered at Softonic HQ. The badly-rendered typing guru has always been regarded as the digital equivalent of a favourite aunt and is part of the reason why Softonic's blog posts are written so quickly.

The application was designed to help you learn to touch-type or improve your typing speed and accuracy. The original version, which you can download from Flashback, taught you by displaying the layout of a keyboard along with transparent fingers to explain where your hands should be hovering. Mavis would then bark orders, getting you to type what she was saying, and gradually getting faster.

The idea was that after a few hours in Mavis' company you'd be able to touch-type with ease. It didn't do a bad job, but typing tutors have evolved a lot since Ms Beacon's era. For instance, MaxType Typing Tutor allows you not only to test and practice your typing skills with any *.txt file, but to print out test 'diplomas' statistical data, which will give you the information about 20 parameters of your typing and even replay the mtr-record file of your own typing. For younger users, the wonderfully silly Tux Typing is full of enough fun and games to keep kids' fingers tapping for a long time.