There's snow doubt this is one of the varied, polished, fun-packed releases for the Nintendo DS this Christmas.

It's got dozens of games based around Winter Olympics standards like skiing, skating, ice hockey, tobogganing and snowboarding.

There's as much quality as quantity: although many events are little more than mini-games, some are terrific, one or two good enough to have been fully-fledged DS titles on their own.

Some of the controls seem odd to begin with -- for example using the stylus to ski -- but generally they're well designed.

There are many official winter sports, Dream Events with Mario Kart-style gameplay, a story mode that works very well, and an excellent multi-player mode.

David Knights