The Mighty World Cup Quiz

It's painfully embarrassing when you bump into an old acquaintance and realise you've totally forgotten their name. Speaking as a 20-something who's rapidly approaching the credibility wasteland that is '30', this seems to be occurring with depressing regularity.

But while the onset of the years is one possible explanation, I'd like to think that the burden of having to memorize completely random and pointless facts is the real reason for my absent-mindedness.

For example, could my forgetfulness be down to fact that, through playing The Mighty World Cup Quiz, I now know what animal was thrown onto the pitch during the match between France and Canada at the 1986 World Cup, and somehow this pointless titbit of information has pushed more vital data out of my already overcrowded cranium?

I'm also unwillingly aware of the average attendance of 1994 tournament, and this – combined with the fact that I can casually quote the exact number of red cards handed out in the entirety of the 1978 finals – could possibly contribute to the increasingly slapdash nature of my memory.

It's a scary thought. Where was I again? Oh yes, the review.

Whatever the reason, The Mighty World Cup Quiz mercilessly tests your knowledge of the world's favourite sport, meaning you can put all the useless sporting information that currently silts up your brain to better use, and possibly accumulate even more statistical detritus in the process. Via a wide range of questions, the title enables you to once and for all discover just how fanatical you are about the beautiful game.

The questions themselves range from the forehead-slappingly obvious ('What was the score of the 1966 World Cup final?') to the worryingly encyclopaedic ('Name Scotland's 1974 World Cup anthem').

There are 1,000 of these teasers waiting to test your creaking grey matter, but they still repeat themselves far more often than you might expect. This actually turns out to be a blessing, as the game displays the correct answer in the event of you picking the wrong one, which means when the same tricky question appears later you're rather handily armed with the solution.

Cheap? Maybe. Gratifying? Most definitely.

You're presented with a block of ten brainteasers at a time, the ultimate aim being to answer all of them correctly. Once this is achieved, the ten questions you've successfully solved are removed from the database, which goes some way to removing the aforementioned repetition. Fail to answer just one of them properly and you have to restart with another block of ten.

It would be naive to expect what is essentially a multiple choice quiz game to be a dazzling visual and aural spectacle, but Sprite Interactive has at least tried to make The Mighty World Cup Quiz easy on the eye. The menu system is clean and uncluttered, while the little cheers for successful answers (not to mention derisive chuckles for incorrect ones) help to liven proceedings up immensely.

Compared to some of the more action-packed mobile games out there, The Mighty World Cup Quiz isn't completely straightforward to recommend. It doesn't, after all, offer impulsive action or brain-teasing puzzles. Still, footie fans will find it perfect entertainment for those late nights spent in the company of like-minded friends down the pub.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering: the animal thrown onto the pitch on that fateful day in 1986 was, in fact, a rooster.