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This version of the ubiquitous arcade game is excellent in quality and fatally addictive. The graphics which mke up the rather perilous Frogger environment are vividly coloured and imaginately portrayed with some nice detailed touches like the crocodiles' teeth and the elastic little frogs themselves. If it wasn't for the clock ticking away you could happily sit in front of the television studying the scene.

The controls (keyboard) are easy to use and very responsive, sometimes too responsive when you make a mad dash through the traffic only to end up in the river. Keys A and Z control vertical hopping and the DEL and COPY keys send the frog bounding left and right in its attempt to reach the safety of the lime green marshland.

The traffic consists of lorries. racing cars and bulldozers which scroll left and right across the screen. After a few practice tries this traffic should not prove too much of a problem and it then becomes a question of hanging around waiting for a fly to appear in one of the boxes standing above the river. If you can land on a fly it is worth 200 points and another frog. Waiting around involves springing from logs to turtles and back again without mishap, but the concentration sometimes wanes.

The clock timer allows 30 seconds for each turn and helpfully gives an audible five second countdown. Crocodiles also lurk in the boxes and, you should be warned, sometimes appear in the same box just after a fly. If you do land on a fly a spell is case (with appropriate sound effect) and the fly changes into a friendly frog. Strangely this will still happen if your frog hits the water microseconds after the fly has disappeared. so take the plunge.

Extra frogs are also awarded at 1000 and 2000 points. Each leap counts 10 and a frog home counts 20. Frogger is an excellent game overall. I particularly liked the turtles which occasionally duck beneath the water and the sound of disintegration when the frog is struck by a moving vehicle. This is the sort of game you have to play with somebody continually looking over your shoulder.

Dave Reeder