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If you're a Colour Genie owner then this is your chance to get out into the garden with a gun.

Just in case you've been asleep these last few years, I should explain that Genipede is a version of Centipede, a game in which you do nothing except shoot everything in sight.

Lined up above your laser base at the bottom of the screen are rows of mushrooms. A segmented Geniepede enters the display from the top and makes its way downwards, dodging round the fungi.

Moving your laser left and right and (to a small extent) up and down, you blast away at the descending bug, splitting it into sections that continue downwards until they are either hit (whereupon they turn into mushrooms) or escape from the bottom of the screen to reappear again at the top.

You carry on firing at whatever comes into view, including spiders, descending bugs, and snails - oh yes, and the mushrooms as well if there's nothing else about. You have three lives to start with and you lose one each time you collide with a garden pest.

The snails leave a trail of mutant mushrooms behind them. If the centipede bumps into one it divebombs down to the bottom of the screen. Otherwise there are no surprises for those familiar with the game.

My only reservation about this version is that you get a bonus life every ten thousand points. I'm not the world's greatest centipede killer, but I found myself knocking up lives faster than I was losing them. You don't need to be a wizard at maths to realise that at that rate the game was going to go on forever.

Centipede's a bit old-hat these days, but with Genie games so thin on the ground this has to be recommended.