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Elite maintains their crown as kings of the arcade conversions with Bomb Jack - a colourful and extremely entertaining cartoon-style romp.

If you're a regular reader of C&VG's Arcade Action pages you'll know all about Jack - a cute little caped crusader. He's been coining it in the arcades for a couple of years now.

The basic idea of the game is to help Bomb Jack collect a whole bunch of bombs - at the same time avoiding assorted nasties like knights in armour and robot-birds.

Jack can jump, run and fly around each screen collecting the bombs. If he follows the correct sequence - which has to be learnt - bonus points can be earned. He can freeze the nasties and collect them for extra points too if you help BJ pick up the Powerball which appears from time to time. Other "balls" appear will different bonus point values if collected by BJ.

The most impressive thing about the game - apart from the addictive gameplay of course - are the splendid graphic backgrounds to the four screens. There's an Egyptian pyramid and sphinx screen, a greek temple, skyscrapers and a terrific Bavarian castle.

Once you've completed the four screens the sequence is repeated at tougher levels - different platform/bomb patterns. Bomb Jack is an extremely playable fun game - an excellent conversion of the arcade original, well presented and with some nice sound effects. A must for every arcade action fan.