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Who'd be the work experience boy? If you're not having to supply the mugs of tea and coffee to all those with "proper jobs", then you're having to shin up ladders, leap across gaping chasms and avoid the entire population of the nearby zoo...!

Hard Hat Harry is a very responsive ladders and levels game for the BBC and Acorn Electron, originally released in 2009 but currently enjoying a renaissance thanks to the imminent release of Hard Hat Harry 2: Son Of Harry. The aim is to collect all the mugs on each of the platforms and, no matter how far you fall, you can't be hurt. It has something of the feel of Chuckie Egg about it, but has a variable jump (the longer you hold down the jump key, the further you jump), more variety in aliens (gorillas, pandas, monkeys, etc) and sixteen screens to clear.

The colours chosen are odd. Bright cyan for the background, and deadly flying spanners in yellow in the foreground?!

Hard Hat Harry was written by Tom Walker, whose name you might recognise as the main author of the celebrated Repton: The Lost Realms. Unlike Repton however, he wrote it in just a couple of weeks rather than over five years. Were it not for his admission of this however, I don't think anyone would be able to tell.

Available free from Retro Software.