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From Artic comes this novel game in which a bear driving a car(!) appears at the bottom right of the screen. The car slowly draws to a halt, and the player takes command of Ted the Bear, who must climb around on various levels of scaffolding in an attempt to retrieve the batteries he needs to make his electric car (a subject dear to Sir Clive's heart) run.

To make his task harder, he must keep out of the way of the Bower Bears, who are out to thwart him.

His only weapon is his supply of time bombs, which may be set off in the paths of his attackers.

The batteries are retrieved simply by manoevring Ted so that he walks across the level on which each is sited; this causes the battery to drop to a lower level, and eventually the car may be manipulated so that the batteries fall into the back of it.

A nice feature in this game is the 'Baby Bear Mode', in which the player can get used to moving Ted around without having to deal with his attackers.

Artie has given users the choice of Sinclair, Kempston and Fuller joysticks in addition to simple keyboard control.

The graphics are very good and, for the first few games at least, Bear Bovver makes a refreshing change from the more usual type of arcade game.

My only reservation is how long the interest will be sustained; I suspect that, after a few games, the novelty will begin to wear off.

Still, this is definitely one of the more unusual Spectrum arcade-type games and certainly merits inspection.