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Everyone who has ever found themselves in hysterics as Coyote fails, yet again, to catch the Road Runner will undoubtedly feel as disappointed as I did when playing this game.

Set in the wild west, you play Cliff, the hero of this tale, and you must stop the bandit (or bandido to his chums) from rushing up the canyon, guns blasting. This might sound incredibly easy, but you can't just shoot him, oh no, you have to use various techniques that only someone as dumb as Coyote would try.

On the levels I got through, this included dropping boulders on him, throwing boomerangs at him, chasing round a railway track and then dropping boulders, etc. Apparently there are 15 levels of difficulty, each with between three and five different screens that appear randomly. To graduate from one level to another you must kill the bandido a certain amount of times; though anyone willing to play the game through all fifteen levels would need his head examined!

What makes this game slightly enjoyable to play is that the author, James Day, has managed to capture some of the feel of the original cartoons. At certain points, such as when you roll a boulder at the bandido and it rolls back and flattens you, you realise how much potential this game had.

That said, the graphics are really not up to a standard that you would expect from a well known software house such as New Generation (and being bought by Virgin is no excuse), with the men looking like matchsticks, and the animation being reminiscent of a ZX81.

Overall, Cliff Hanger is a great idea, badly executed. If New Generation had spent more time trying to develop a plot, and then programmed the graphics and sound well, this game would have received a really high rating. As it stands however, it has just too many bad points (including a bug or two). I'll jut have to wait for Loony Tunes!