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At the local beach, the Dune Trials have begun, and you have entered with your shiny new buggy. The trials are set over sandhills, and must be completed within the time limit. Progress is hindered by rocks, fire, helicopters and missiles - all lose you valuable time.

The buggy can accelerate or decelerate across the leftways scrolling sandscape, jump to avoid obstacles, and fire upwards to destroy overhead helicopters. A bar below the action screen indicates the distance remaining to the finishing line of the current stage; when the bar has fallen to zero, your destination has been reached. You can then go on to the next, harder, level.

Rejuvenating old arcade games is forgivable. If enough improvements have been made to keep it in line with today's new games, but when companies start making unplayable Moon Patrol clones it gets rather worrying!

Even the BBC computer version (Spaceman Sid) was better than this - and that was released several years ago!

Beach Buggy Simulator has small, indistinct sprites, poor sound and annoyingly difficult gameplay - so annoying in fact, that after struggling through level one, the minuscule finish flag brought howls of dismay from all and sundry, followed by the machine being hurriedly switched off. Anyone who has dreams of owning a beach buggy, steer them well away from this effort!

What with this, Ninja Scooter Simulator, and the future release of Stuntbike Simulator, Silverbird seem to have acquired a Codemasters characteristic - stand by for a court case! However, going by their first two simulators, Silverbird have nothing to shout about.

Beach Buggy Simulator (whose loading name is initially "Breach Buugy"...!) is a very similar game to Ninja Scooter - avoid the nasties and complete the course within the time limit.

Gameplay is awful, with too many obstacles and too great a delay after collision, and to call the graphics bad is an understatement - they belong in a three-year-old budget game. I won't say what sort of simulator I called this in the office, but it wasn't complimentary!

A few laughs at the poor standard of this game is the only fun you'll get for two quid.

Presentation 61%
Bar a pleasant loading picture, nothing special.

Graphics 29%
Child-like graphics are not cute enough to provide enjoyment.

Sound 44%
Reasonable tune and spot effects.

Hookability 59%
Despite awful playability, a desire to see stage two is fired...

Lastability 14%
...And swiftly quenched when level two is found to be virtually identical.

Overall 21%
A far-outdated game both in concept and execution.