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It's a tough life being a bee. In this game's predecessor, The Birds And The Bees, you had to laboriously collect pollen from flowers while under constant attack from ferocious birds. This time it's even worse. Your mate's been stolen by ants and you have to wander around underground trying to rescue him.

What lies underground is in fact a string of inter-connected mazes populated by some nasty creatures and, surprisingly, a fair number of flowers. These flowers are important because your stamina is continually on the wane so you need to visit them for refreshment. Contact with nasty insects, especially certain spiderish ants, will draw heavily on your stamina, and once it runs out, you're finished and must start the game again.

Antics is basically another attempt at deepening the challenge of an arcade game by giving you a complex task to solve. You cannot simply take it one maze at a time, because to get from A to B on a single maze, you may have to go through several other mazes - each maze being a different screen.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't appear to map as straightforwardly as, say, Jet Set Willy. For example, if you keep going west, you end up in a maze which should have been way to the east.

Another trouble is that once you've solved the game it's unlikely to hold much further interest. But you won't solve it in a hurry. Even when you've found your mate, you've got to guide him back to the surface, flying very slowly. With well over 20 mazes to negotiate, that'll take some doing.