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I must be going mad. It can't be... it's... it's an *original* game!! Fetch a doctor. I just can't believe it...

There's this little cat, you see. Beautifully animated, by the way. Very well-behaved. Obeys your joystick's every whim (forget the keyboard - the choice of keys is terrible!).

Screen displays kitchen shelves laden with food intended for human consumption, but ending up as mouse-fodder. Young Caesar leaps from shelf to shelf as the mice dodge from dish to dish.

If the feline chances upon one of the rodents, he grabs it in his mouth. A door appears somewhere at the edge of the screen, and Caesar must run along the shelves and out of the door to dump his victim. Then it's into the larder for another catch.

The kitten moves rather slowly, but you can speed him up by pressing the fire-button, or the 'Z' key. He mustn't jump up or down by the teapot or the cups and saucers, because then he knocks them down and breaks them. The scoring system is rather unusual.

You start with 1,000 points and the points drop as time passes. Catching mice adds points; breakages and the disappearance of food lose them.

You also lose points for bumping Caesar's nose against the edge of the screen I should think so too. The highest score attained during the current game (or a previous one) is constantly displayed and updated.

As the game wears on, the mice change colour and get progressively greedier and harder to catch. The game ends when your score falls to zero, as inevitably it will.

The Spectrum version is very similar to that on the Commodore 64 but easier to operate from the keyboard.

Caesar the Cat won't satisfy firepower addicts or mice-lovers, but for the rest of us it's terrific.

Congratulations to Mirrorsoft and Andromeda Software for a simple, enjoyable, and original game.