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Bounder is a conversion from a game originally released on the C64, which I am told was incredibly addictive in its original version. I haven't played the C64 version so I'm not going to try and compare the two, but I can imagine that this would be a highly addictive game if only the Spectrum version were a little easier to play.

The Bounder of the title is a tennis ball which goes bouncing over a landscape made up of square tiles, each of which has different properties. Tiles with an octagonal pattern marked on them are safe to bounce on, tiles marked with an arrow give the ball a boost and allow it an extra high bounce to get over certain obstacles, and tiles marked with a question mark give you various bonuses. Just about everything else is deadly to bounce on. Some of these deadly tiles can be bounced over to reach safety, but others are parts of walls which you can't bounce over and so have to be totally avoided. There are also a few airborne obstacles, birds and what look like flying aspirins, which are deadly on contact.

You control Bounder either by joystick or keyboard ("but if you haven't got a joystick you haven't got a chance - ha!" the on-screen instructions add helpfully), and can bounce in any direction as long as your progress is forwards. Trying to bounce backwards simply slows down your forward motion a bit. The screen gives you a directly overhead view of the ball as it bounces over the landscape which scrolls downwards from the top of the screen.

At the start of the game, your ball begins its bouncing at the bottom of the screen which is fine as this allows you to keep the ball low down on the screen and watch the landscape as it scrolls downwards towards you so that you can see the deadly and safe tiles as they approach. As long as you can do this the game is enjoyable and highly playable, and controlling the ball is tricky enough to keep you grasping your joystick nervously. But, as soon as you lose a life the next ball reappears near the top of the screen and you simple don't have enough time to react before the landscape scrolls down in order to try and avoid instant death.

This is one of those games that can take a very simple idea and turn it into something infuriatingly addictive. It's well designed on the whole, and the animation of the ball as it seems to bounce into and out of the screen is clear and effective. I have to admit that I've gone back to Bounder several times to try and have another go at staying alive past stage two, but the way you can lose so many lives one after the other simply because the ball has appeared right at the top of the screen only to straight away land of a deadly tile is pretty irritating. If it weren't for that one factor, Bounder might well have been a monster hit, but even so it's still good fun.