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Somewhere between their Silver Range, Super Silver Range, Gold Range and free range eggs, Firebird have not slotted in the Hot Range of mid-price games that don't quite measure up to the standard of Elite but are meant to be a bit classier than their budget titles.

One of the first titles in the Hot Range is Costa Capters, a sort of Miner Willy Goes On Holiday game in which you control a character called Ted Blewitt. Ted, it seems has gone off on holiday and managed to lose all his luggage, including his camera which can take 36 snapshots needed to prove to Ted's friends that he really has been abroad.

Your ultimate aim is to gather in all Ted's luggage and then get his holiday photos developed. Of course it isn't quite as simple as it sounds (it never is, is it?) since in order to collect all the items they must be collected from various locations in a total of some 50-odd screens. These are full of the usual platform game lunacy - Ted jumping left and right to avoid deadly sprites, ladders, lifts and so on, and he also has to watch out for his Sunburn and hangover indicators which can affect his ability to remain vertical.

There are a number of other factors that complicate the game but the basic format is very much that of the old-fashioned platform game. It's a well designed game, with all sorts of interconnected problems. I found some of the obstacles very difficult to get past, and after two evenings of playing the game I've still only fotten through about a dozen screens - there are a number of routes that I just haven't been able to get through, no matter how many times I try.

The graphics are very colourful, with few attribute problems, and Ted himself is quite a cute figure whose legs waggle comically as he gets bounced around the screen.

Costa Capers is a good platform game with a number of features that make it a bit more complex than Manic Miner and all its clones, but there's no escaping the fact that this sort of game is getting a bit dated. This one offers quite a few hours of simple fun, but I do think that it's a little overpriced and perhaps more suited to one of Firebird's cheaper labels.