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Have you ever been ill and wondered what exactly was going wrong with your poor little body? Sitting there sweating, head throbbing, stomach making horrible gurgly noises and all that sort of thing. Now the inner workings of your body can be revealed by playing Gerry the Germ.

You see, Gerry has been thrown out of the institute of Infectology for failing to get his stinkploma... out on the street, no money, a bacteria and a colony of viruses to support. Most ordinary germs would be defeated by this crushing blow, but not Gerry. He's a fighter, a rebel, a rapscallion, and he's going to show the world that he's the best by taking on and completely infecting a human being single-handed.

You play the part of that heroic, teensy-weensy little germ, and have to successfully infect six parts of your host's body. There are six tasks, each forming six separate screens, and failing one results in him being put back to the first screen.

Gerry starts his quest in his unsuspecting host's lungs (after he's been inhaled). In the middle of the lungs are four square-dancing red blood corpuscles. Every time they cross, a bottle of oxygen is produced which Gerry has to collect, until the lungs become diseased. Once that has been done he can whizz down a handy vein to the kidneys.

Here, Gerry has to eat as many kidney beans as it takes to make a reaction in his bacterial botty... and he can then go to the toilet and ruin the poor man's bowels. Naturally his task isn't an easy one and there are antibodies floating about the screen in the form of a plunger and toilet attendant These have to be avoided and at the same time Gerry has to hack about after the kidney beans before they run off screen.

The next stop is the bladder. Ho, ho, ho. Gerry has luckily picked up a little rowing boat and is paddling around the pi-lake of strong liquid. Swimming about in the lake is a bull (!) which can overturn the boat... But luckily Gerry can pick up highly dangerous tactile nuclear toilet rolls to throw at it. If one hits home then the bull sinks for a while before continuing its chase. Gerry has to survive long enough for the bladder to pack in, and then it's on to the stomach.

Lots of nasties trundle their way around the stomach - a tapeworm, a gas pocket, and lots of healthy food. Some stun, others shunt you about the screen, so you have to watch out! Gerry has to dissolve Mr Asprin, guardian of the exit (he stops the stomach from going wrong), by dissolving him with the acid bottle found wandering around the screen. If Mr Asprin is dissolved then the stomach gets all acidic and the host suffers horribly, har, har.

The next stop is the pancreas, which looks rather like the inside of a train carriage (pancreas sounds like St Pancras - joke). The screen is split in half, one half the inside of the carriage and the other the driver's compartment, with the fireman and driver. In the carriage are medical supplies that should be dealt with. If Gerry touches them then they're infected, but he has to watch out for mean white cells whose touch spells trouble. Once the medical supplies have been ruined Gerry must stop the train, done by climbing unseen into the driver's compartment and lobbing coal at the driver. The driver thinks it's the fireman and a fight ensues...

Gerry's final job is to stop the heart. The objective of this screen is to reach the heart, made difficult by the amount of antibodies zooming around the screen. If Gerry finally manages to infect the heart then he wins, and proves to the rest of the germ world that he's a jolly clever fellow really.

Although Gerry the Germ contains some amusing touches, it is, as a whole, not much fun. All six screens are frustrating to play and have little variety, which means any initial interest quickly wanes. Graphically it is quite pleasant and the tunes are jolly, but they do tend to irritate after a few games. Gerry the Germ is too expensive for what it is and I even doubt its credibility at a budget price.

The humour in this game, although being lavatorial, is quite enjoyable. Playing it though, is another kettle of fish entirely. Most of the screens involve chasing an object around whilst trying to dodge others, which soon becomes a real bore. Finishing a screen, having a couple of seconds on the next, failing and having to return to the previous one again, was another niggling point - I'm sure it would have been much better to have lives. It's surprising that Firebird are asking £7.95 for this program; at £1.99 it would have just about seemed passable.

It's quite hard to decide anything really definite on this one. I mean it's a bit strange. The graphics are strange; for a start Gerry, looking very germlike, plods around strange looking backgrounds. Strange. The instruction booklet doesn't exactly walk on the normal side of life either; it's a great big wall chart giving wore gentle hints than actual instructions. Double strange. What I do know about Gerry the Germ is that it's a bitch to play. Easy it isn't. Getting past the lungaroo (the first sheet) is way beyond the meagre talents of myself and the rest of the reviewing team. In the end you are buying a game for just that, the game, and Gerry the Germ is so hard that there really isn't one in there. Shame, because some of the humour is quite nice.

Presentation 66%
Inadequate, but attractive instructions and sufficient on-screen presentation.

Graphics 60%
Small sprites, but generally quite colourful and jolly.

Sound 75%
Several standard Rob Hubbard tunes which soon become annoying.

Hookability 52%
Fiddling around inside a body is reasonably enjoyable...

Lastability 38%
... but only six screens of the same sort of thing is not enough.

Value For Money 34%
Very much overpriced, especially when it's not as good as many budget releases.

Overall 39%
A very simple six-screen arcade game with a perverse sense of humour and little else.