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Remember Ghouls 'N Goblins? Well, Arthur rescued his true love Princess Hus and everything ended happily. Until Ghouls 'N Ghosts, that is. Yap, the diabolical Demon is back and he has kidnapped the Princess (yet again!), this time on her wedding day. So Art soon exchanges his morning suit for a suit of armour and a handful of lances.

Arthur begins his quest, as before, in the local graveyard. And you can rest assured there are plenty of demonic minions just waiting to put a dent in his armour. Scythe-wielding zombies, vicious vultures, skull-splitting guillotines and fire-spitting plants all greet our hero with open arms (and the Devil goes to work on a snow-plough!).

The lance is a pretty nifty weapon, but as in Ghosts 'N Goblins there are ways to improve Art's chances of survival. Some of the creatures carry pots (no, not plant pots, you fool) containing a brief invulnerability spell. There are also chests scattered around and these sometimes contain extra lives, weapons or the occasional magical suit of armour (which turns Arthur into Paul Daniels) [Gawd forbid - Man Ed].

A word of warning though, in many of the chests resides a stereotypical evil wizard-type dude. If you release him, he casts a spell that turns you temporarily into a duck (what, no orange sauce?).

When Arthur's in human form, his first wound reduces him to his boxer shorts; a second hit transforms him to a bag of bones (in other words he kicks the bucket!).

But even the worst nightmare ends with a battle between our lad and the big end-of-level guardian. Hopefully Arthur will have picked up a more powerful weapon along the way; if not it's time to hang on to yet maracas. If you manage to survive the rigours of fatty bashing it's onto the next level.

Four quid for one of the greatest C64 games ever? Kixx must have gone completely off their trolley. If you missed Ghouls 'N Ghosts the first time round you need a check-up from the neck up. It's brill.

Not least the atmospheric toe-tapping tunes. Most of the time you're listening to them rather than helping Arthur out of scrapes with the evil denizens. The sprites are small but wonderfully animated, and a very supple trigger finger is needed to kill all the enemy creatures. A classic game that deserves a place in every software collection.