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Okay, cards on the table. I'm a big fan of Cosgrove Hall animation and of Count Duckula in particular. [Somehow I knew you were going to say that - Ed]. On the whole the crazy scripts are very funny indeed, and although the animation is horribly limited, Duckula's to-camera looks are great.

The first Duckula outing, "No Sax Please, We're Egyptian", was a respectable platform game with an extremely silly cheat mode (the Count turned into a bottle of banana milk, or something), and this sequel lifts its snappy plot straight from one of the shows (Duckula gets marooned on the Planet Cute and has to avoid the teddies and fluffy bunnies and escape back to dear old dreary Transylvania) so it comes as a hope-dashing disappointment that Duckula 2 is such a dreadful game.

Once again, platforms are the order of the day, with the Count advancing through single-screen levels, his task simply to get from the left of the screen to the right. To make life as tricky as possible, cute baddies (or goodies, or whatever) patrol the platforms, which themselves have a witty habit of disappearing.

As Duckula is armed with a ketchup gun, gameplay consists of avoiding or shooting the cuties and waiting for a platform to appear in front of you so you can get that bit nearer to the exit. This game has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. As only one platform is within reach at a time, you simply stand there and wait for either (a) another one to appear so you can jump onto it, or (b) the one you're standing on to disappear, dropping you fatally to the ground. (Whereupon you have to leave the room and come back in, because the game doesn't reset the platforms!)

Dodging cuties is no better - you either squirt them (until your ammo runs out) or, erm, get killed by them. The whole thing seems to play quite happily by itself, with the player being a sort pf novelty bonus!

The Count is doing himself no favours at all by endorsing this very sad, can't-believe-it-wasn't-written-in-1982 game. Saying this is aimed at younger players is no excuse.

What makes Alternative think they can get away with giving younger players such a rubbish game?

The 'special 128K version' features a spacey shoot-em-up intro and the TV theme tune. They are both very, very bad.

This really is a sad game. It beats even Friday The 13th for the title of Worst Speccy Game Of All Time, and it's not even enjoyably bad. It's just insultingly bad.