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Mike Williams was something of a jack of all trades on the Electron and, I suspect, something of a perfectionist. With a large number of games to his credit, you sense common themes running through them all. Almost without exception, they are tweaked versions of established ideas with colourful, albeit rudimentary, graphics. Diamond Mine II is one of his best and is a variation on the original Diamond Mine that is about a hundred times better. You're still in control of a vacuum pipe, you're still tasked with running it over all the flashing squares (diamonds) in the maze of caverns (mine) that fills the majority of the screen and you've still got to do it all while avoiding the cutesy mine inhabitants and before time runs out.

However, whilst the original game was of a style where you could direct the pipe into the very walls of the maze and suffer a quick demise, the sequel is a much more forgiving jaunt which removes this irksome feature entirely. Your robotic assistant Diamo releases the pipe from the top centre of the screen and the nozzle can be directed left, right, up and down in order to navigate each maze, curling around its kinks and corners to clear it of diamonds. The only other control is the Return key which, rather appropriately, returns the pipe a little way through the maze, or retracts it all the way to Diamo's feet if you hold it down for a long period. The skill of the game is to use the Return key whenever you need to, because if you forget and "double-back" the nozzle on itself, you will "bite yourself" and lose a life.

Across each of the screens, at regular levels throughout the maze, patrol the nasties which, in Diamond Mine II, take the form of large, blinking eyeballs. These will also take one of your lives if they "bite" the elongated pipeline, but will be swiftly neutralised if you run its nozzle directly into them. It's a fairly easy first task on each screen therefore to make your way through the maze eating both the diamonds and the eyes, and then think you can complete the cave clearance unhindered. The trouble is that the eyes you've eaten only disappear for a short time, and then they come back, scrolling on again from the left or right of the screen and bearing down upon your vulnerable elongated pipeline at the most inopportune of moments. The only way to avoid being bitten by them is to retract the pipe to their level and run the head into them for a second time. There's something about the re-emergence of the eyes that often causes you to panic and double-back on yourself rather than retract it!

It all moves at a reasonable speed with a passable opening sequence and the journey of your assistant Diamo from the wings to the centre is accompanied by some nice musical jingles. A nice touch is that he continues bouncing up and down throughout the action but his energy is limited, so if you don't clear the mine before it hits zero, that's also game over.

Although it's all fairly simplistic, it works quite well with a variety of maze layouts that become more and more difficult (until level eleven when they repeat - but as invisible mazes!). There are enough panicked retractions and "success by the skin of your teeth" moments for the game to be genuinely exciting. And yet it doesn't quite have the addictive qualities of, say, Rubble Trouble. That's likely due to the fact that, although the screen layouts change, the actual game - the same number of eyes, same number of diamonds and same speed of play - remains constant. Once you've got in some practice, polishing off the early screens (without even breaking a sweat) is ever-so-slightly tedious. It's a shame that you can't make the game a little bit faster, or start on a later level, as that would really increase its lastability.

Diamond Mine II was released by Blue Ribbon and, as Blue Ribbon had deals with high street chains like WHSmith, Chips, Asda and Toys 'R Us, it sold in droves back in the day. In the Eighties, it retailed for £1.99, but it can be picked up nowadays for as little as 49p in some places. At that type of price, it's well worth a punt. It's the sort of game that shows off the Electron's capabilities quite well without being needlessly flashy or complicated.