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Veroooom! There I was burning rubber around this big banked bend when all of a sudden what do I see? A f***ing great rock in the road in front of me! Hello, I thought to myself, I'm in for a bit of an accident here. But no! Just in front of the rock there's a well-placed tree trunk! So it's up and over the great granite lump and safely down on the road again.

Did I say safely? How wrong can you be! I may have missed the rock but what I didn't know was that there's a whole bunch of water the other side - and the bridge wasn't where it should've been. Still, the buggy needed a wash...

Yes, it's here and it's truly wonderful. What is it? Buggy Boy, of course! That tried and tested coin-op hits the small screen at last. And Elite has its been game of 1987!

If it's playability and lastability plus great value you're after then look no further. Buggy Boy has all of these - and more. All the conversion lacks is the steering wheel from the arcade machine.

If you've never played Buggy Boy or Buggy Boy Junior in the arcades before, you've not lived. It puts you in the driving seat of one of those VW Beetle Buggies much-loved by off-road racers in the US of A. You compete against the clock over five demanding tracks packed with hazards and opportunities to put big dents into your vehicle.

Avoid rocks, drive on two wheels to squeeze through seemingly impossible gaps, pick up bonus points and extra time by collecting flags and driving through special "gates". Jump obstacles by launching your buggy off tree trunks - just love that bounce! Drive up banking to get up more speed - but steer clear of lakes, other drivers and hard brick walls! And when you've done all that, check out C&VG's special players guide for more hints and tips.

There are five different tracks to test your driving skills; Off-road, North, South, East and West. Off-road is a closed circuit - and really simply shows you what to expect on the other tracks. Stuff like the bonus flags which have to be collected in the order shown at the top of the screen, and the bonus "gates" plus many of the hazards.

After a couple of attempts at this you'll probably find you can complete the track and it's time to move on to the *real* test.

North features snow, walls and banked corners, South is sort of desert-like with palm trees as an added hazard; East is very green and you'll see your first fellow buggyboy driver here; West features more mountains and another buggy.

North, South, East and West also features Outrun-style extended play - reach a certain spot on the map and you can continue driving. Fail and it's back to the pits.

Screen display is just like the arcade machine - showing the flags and the order in which they have to collected, a map showing your location on the track, hi-lo gear settings, score and time left. Everything you could possibly want on one small screen.

At the end of each game you see your score plus any bonuses plus another map of the track showing how far you had left to go.

The game features high-score charts for each of the five tracks, nice sound FX, but strangely, on our review copy anyway, no front end music.

The graphics are good and playability, well I reckon it almost goes off the old C&VG's ometer. Addictive isn't the word. If you're a Buggy Boy fan, or even if you aren't, then beg, borrow or steal a copy.