A quick shufti through the instructions reveal in very great detail how to turn on my computer. Very useful, but what I want to know is... who's this Archie Pelago person and what's he got to do with my being kept entertained for the next hour or so at the keys of my Commodore? Further reading reveals the truth about Pacific islands and running around in caves collecting treasure, etc, so I decide to give it a bash.

Initial impressions are good: a very nice image of a cave and a figure running like hell for it and then a blank screen. A line appears, snaking about the screen like an insane lump of spaghetti, rapidly forming either a maze or a crossword puzzle. It turns out to be a maze. (I could tell because you don't often get fleas running around in crossword puzzles. Come to think of it, you don't often get fleas running around in mazes but the instructions seem to bear out my train of thought.)

The fleas turn out to be intelligent spiders. I asked them about the Theory of Relativity but they didn't seem to know about it. Anyway, to achieve any degree of success in this game requires that you kill them rather than indulge in small talk so it doesn't matter anyway.

No prizes for guessing that you have to guide a man around the maze, collecting treasures and avoiding or killing spiders. Nor for guessing that when all the treasures are collected you get another maze, more difficult than the previous. Is there never anything new and original in computer games? No prizes for an answer to that one either.