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From the name, you might think this would be one of those text-only simulation games about buying stocks and shares low and selling them high. But Corporate Climber is actually an arcade game. Sadly, that's where the good news ends. It's one of the most unexciting arcade games ever written and you'll be bored of it within five minutes.

The action takes place in a tower block and you have control of a little man who, for some weird reason, likes sitting in a desk drawer. Your aim is to progress up the tower block by moving from one side of it to the other. On the top of the tower block is a toilet where you can take a much needed dump (or presumably empty out the drawer if you didn't make it in time).

The game runs at a fairly decent speed and, unusually, in the Electron's most colourful screen mode. You use only two keys - Z (left) and X (right) - and begin bottom-left hand corner. As soon as you start moving, the drawer slides along like it's on ice. It cannot be stopped until you reach the other side of the screen or turn it around.

Between the platforms of the tower are six pogoing taxmen and a collision with one of them will rob you of one of your (overly-generous) quota of five lives. You only have a certain amount of time to wind your way through them however, and this is signified by a bonus counting down on the right-hand side of the screen. There's also a blood pressure monitor right below it which warns you of an impending panic attack, and which increases if you don't make it before the bonus expires.

So essentially, what you have here is an invitation to cross the same screen no less than twelve times with absolutely no increase in difficulty and no variety, other than being further "up" the screen. The only skill is in timing when to cross the screen to stand the best chance of making it without hitting a taxman. Oh, and performing a sort of left-right-left-right-left shuffle on the spot whilst a taxman gets out of your way.

Yes, it's fast. Yes, the background tune is nice. And yes, it's superficially attractive to look at. But where's the challenge? Answer: Nowhere.

Honestly put, this is the sort of game you might imagine coming out of Japan. I might then greet it with a wry smile and murmur something about cultural norms. But this is meant to model some fable of the tea-boy rising through the ranks of the corporate world and gaining the fabled key to the executive washroom. Um, right.

When it was released, the Acorn press didn't call it out as being boring. But you can really sense the level of nonplussedness when the best reviewers have to say is "good sound and visuals plus adequate instructions" (Acorn User) and "There's a choice of sound on or off to preserve your sanity" (Electron User). I certainly wouldn't race down to the shops with a tenner on the back of either of those quotes.

I don't believe this game sold in significant numbers and publisher Dynabyte disappeared from the scene after a few weeks, so finding a physical copy of it will probably prove difficult, although all five of Dynabyte's games were released on a compilation called The Supersellers Collection (Supersellers? Hope springs eternal!) a few years later and that seemed to do much better. Expect to pay around £5 for the standalone cassette, and £2-£5 for the compilation one.