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I'm sure we're all well acquainted with the disgusting snotty slimy green (and I mean that literally) alien thingy from Get Fresh and Gilbert's Fridge. Yep, Gilbert's back, and this time it's your computer that gets covered in filthy green goo!

The foul alien hero is getting his colleagues on planet Drill a bit annoyed. He can't stop telling every one how wonderful he is, so when he gets offered a new contract to appear on Earth TV, his not so-friendly friends nick some essential bits of his spaceship, The Millennium Dustbin, so as he won't be able to get to Earth to sign the contract. Poor Gilbert. No-one will tell him where the bits are, and so he can't go back to Earth. He'll have to go on a YTS...!

But - but! - there is one hope left. Scattered around homeworld Drill are five arcade machines. Play the games successfully, and the machines will give him a clue as to the location of one of the parts for the Dustbin. Brain Drain is a memory game where you have to match tiles by remembering where you saw them; in Sprout Wars you shoot the little lace lots of times without hitting any of the sprouts; Greed is a Iron variant where you collect numbered bags of money In order without crossing your path; then there are the fairly obvious Earth Invaders and Ping Pong.

Gilbert is really good fun. I don't like the character (not that I ever watch Saturday morning children's programmes, ahem), but Again Again have made a good job of this one. The tune on the 128K is excellent, and though the live arcade machines are incredibly basic, when combined with the rest of the game, they make a nice diversion; it's quite fun just to hunt around Drill for a machine to play.

Colour is overdone (turn down that contrast control matey!) but the Gilbert animation is quite funny, especially the snotting (who said that?)! The other computer versions of Gilbert were laughable; it's good to see that the Spectrum can still beat the competition!

MIKE

'Yukky! Snotty little alien creatures on your computer! Gilbert Escape From Drill is in a very similar style to games like Garfield - Big Fat Hairy Deal and Jack The Nipper. Drill, the aliens, and Gilbert himself, are all done in a cartoon graphics which adds to the appeal for youngsters, plus there's a jolly tune playing all the time (and it does get a bit annoying!). The game's playable for a while, but for hardened gamesters it won't last long. Younger games players familiar with the Gilbert character will love just exploring the city, so it might be worth buying for them. Quite a fun little game.'