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Back in 1981, some time after the great Space Invaders boom, Atari launched an arcade game called Centipede. It captured the hearts of many, especially those of the software houses who, as one, sat down at their computers and produced masses of clones of the game.

Crawler arrived from out of the blue and landed with a thud through the letterbox. "Another Caterpillar game" we thought - groan! groan!

In fact, Crawler came as a pleasant surprise once it loaded - the screen depicts the classic Centipede scene, namely a field full of mushrooms, a few creepy crawlies and you as the gardener with a shooter. At least, I think it's a gun - it definitely gets rid of the crawlies.

Crawler, your average friendly caterpillar, has decided to come out of wherever caterpillars lurk to devour a whole field of juicy mushrooms. However, the gardener's not too happy about this state of affairs and so out comes the shooter and he happily blasts away.

As in the original Centipede, the caterpillar, when shot, doesn't die - but splits into segments and chases after the gardener - often with tragic results. An assortment of crawlies, all on the caterpillar's side, also appear and will use any means to stop the gardener. High points if you manage to kill them. Believe me - you soon have a full-time job on your hands!

The graphics and colour are well up to the BBC's standards though they could have been better defined and more exciting. However, I can appreciate that it would be difficult to fill a screen with mushrooms, spiders, caterpillars and the gardener without keeping all the characters fairly small.

What saves this game from being ordinary is the sound - it's loud, fast and exciting... just what you need when blasting at caterpillars! Accidentally turning the sound off using the on/off option, I found all the incentive to play the game had gone. It's definitely better with lots of zapping noises.