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This offering from Mastertronic bears more than a passing resemblance to Michael Jackson's epic video, Thriller.

To rescue your girlfriend from a haunted house, you must leave your car which has broken down in the middle of a spooky forest many miles from the nearest AA station. Being a hero, you decide to set off on foot through various blood-curdling screens, risking life and limb with every step you take.

There are five screens - the forest, the cinema, the ghetto, the graveyard and finally the haunted house. On each screen you have to collect magic crosses from all sorts of tricky locations, as in Manic Miner. Nevertheless, Chiller is different enough from that classic to provide many hours of enjoyment.

In the forest, the crosses are distributed about the branches and on rope bridges. Your energy is sapped through confrontations with giant spiders, zombies and toadstools. Having collected all the crosses from the forest, you move on to the cinema, in which more vile creatures attack you, this time in the aisles. Although I played for many hours, I never managed to get beyond the cinema.

However, if you do get to the haunted house and rescue your girlfriend your problems have only just started. You now have to get back to the car which means another perilous journey through all five screens.

The graphics are not the greatest seen on the C64 but they are good, if slightly indistinct occasionally.

On the sound side. a rendition of the song Thriller is played, although it does differ slightly from the original in places, with the odd wrong note thrown in for the sake of copyright.

Buy this if you dare!

Something tells me that the idea for Chiller came from a certain worldwide best-selling album and pop video. Despite this (or because of this, pop fans will say) the game is very playable, and is definitely a decent addition to the bargain price range.

The animation of the boy (Michael?) is smooth, and the assorted creepies are also quite slick. The obvious theme tune that plays throughout the game, is well rendered. Control by joystick or keyboard is fortunately not sluggish - instead of pulling my hair out, it just goes grey with the worry!

Although the gameplay is of an unoriginal type, Chiller still represents a challenge of a high standard. At this price, a real must.

Chiller is an interesting variation on the Manic Miner type game. I liked the idea of having energy instead of 'lives', since being reincarnated on the same spot, which occurs in most games, is not very realistic.

Unfortunately, your character blends in well with the background, so it is hard to see him. But overall the graphics are excellent.