Building on the success of last year's Christmas smash The Dizzy Collection, Codies' Cartoon Collection features five of their highly successful budget titles, one of which was previously unavailable on the C64. So what are they like? Read on...

Is there anyone out there who hasn't got a copy of Dizzy? This game's been recycled more times than one of Phil King's jokes, and I can't imagine anyone who wants one not already owning it. Not that it was any good - scoring a miserly 48% in issue 41. It doesn't really make good use of the C64's capabilities.

Anyone who has played Chase H.Q. will know what porting Speccy code to the C64 does to a game, and I'm afraid that's what has been done here. Not a disaster (48% is a little harsh), but a pale imitation of its Spectrum counterpart. Could and should have been better.

Now this is more like it! Spike In Transylvania's humorous approach and simple-but-endearing puzzles earned it a Silver Medal in Issue 74. Spike differs from the Codies' other arcade adventures in that it features three-dimensional movement, rather like the old Ultimate games.

Difficult to get to grips with at first, but fiendishly addictive when mastered, Spike In Transylvania remains one of Code Masters' better releases.

Another Silver Medal Winner!! Scoring a massive 94%, CJ is one of the best original budget releases ever seen on the C64. A cutesy platform shoot-'em-up in The New Zealand Story and Bubble Bobble mould.

CJ features smooth-scrolling excellent graphics, and one of the siliest plots ever seen on a computer game. The collision detection is sometimes a little dodgy, making it unclear how close you can get to the platform's edge before falling off, but this doesn't stop it from being one of the most challenging budget games ever.

Aaarrrggghh! They've done it again - Seymour is ported across from the Speccy in the same way as Dizzy. No attempt has been made to utilise the C64's superior graphic ability and the game runs extremely slowly, taking ages to display the next screen or to update the objects list.

It's a real shame, as all the great Speccy gameplay's here with logical, well-thought out problems that push back the frontiers of arcade adventures. The cutesy Speccy graphics are also very characterful, although obviously lacking in colour.

Slightly Magic also suffers from Speccy port-over syndrome. the main sprite is well drawn but hideously animated, shuffling across the screen like a crab with diarrhoea. The screen flickers badly when you pick up an object or talk to another character, making this run-of-the-mill arcade-adventure look very amateurish.

All in all, Cartoon Collection is a disappointing compilation, featuring too many games written on other formats and badly converted to the C64. Could have been a goodie, but as it stands you'd be better off buying CJ's Elephant Antics and skipping the others.