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Atom Ant, he's great I've got all his records, is making a bit of comeback on the Spectrum with a completely new image. Atom, famous for his Indian Brave and Dandy Highwayman stage costumes, has opted for the two inches tall cartoon insect look.

The aim of the game is to defuse seven explosive festooned buildings that Mad Dog Jackson has decided would look far more attractive as piles of corpse littered rubble. Just pick up the bombs, one at a time and dump them into the handy atomiser sitting atop of your current building, making sure to get it all done within the time limit otherwise you'll get a great big bang (fnarr fnarr).

Trying to rain on your parade are Mad Dog Jackson's gang of wild henchmen who are about as bright a two watt bulb. Even the boys from C&VG seem quick on the trigger compared to general numb-skullery these lads exhibit. They go left and then right. That's it really. Actually it does heat up a bit on the later levels with 16 ton weights and safes raining down the screen with ant splatting speed.

The graphics are quite nice though they don't come into their own until the later levels when Atom Ant has to do his stuff in some very pretty castle backdrops. Everything ticks along at a nice old pace, although the hard gameplay is largely to do with the difficulty of controlling your ant as opposed to any clever design.

So it's not the best game in the world but it la nicely done. I'm tempted to excuse it due to the oh-well-it's-only-three-knicker syndrome but there's quite a good load of quality budget clobber knocking around these days and you really should shop wisely. Atom really should have stuck to the music biz.

A must for Atom Ant fans and a bit of a chore for the rest of us.