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Recently budget games seem to have taken off very well. Hobgoblin, at £1.99, is one such. The idea is to rescue the Golden Orb which has been stolen, in order to keep the peace in the far off land of Altoris. The King has commissioned you to take up the job of rescuing this Orb and stopping the Hobgoblins and ghosts from invading the quiet land - i.e. Hobgoblin is an arcade adventure much the same as any other.

You are greeted by a very distorted figure, which I presume is supposed to be a man. When he runs, the movement is appalling as the sprite has not been designed at all well. At the top of the screen is the information which tells you such things as how many of your three lives are remaining, how many treasures you have, and your score. At the bottom of the screen is your time left - initially set at 999.

The only extra feature to this game is that you can collect items which will increase the power of your weapon and items that increase the range.

The game allows you to fire at an opponent and also to jump over them but I found quite often that they fired quicker than you and, before you know it, you are deaded!

If you manage to survive this screen, the next is almost impossible to do without losing a life. The face that fires at you is extremely hard to overcome, and even jumping over it doesn't work.

I found that you really need about eight lives in order to complete even a small section of this game. I don't actually know how many screens there are, but more than likely you will see about as many as I did, around seven.

Other enemies that you will be faced with include a flying fish, archers and walking fish. When an enemy dies, he sometimes leaves a more powerful weapon or treasure to help your quest. There are plenty of other cheap arcade adventures of much better standards.

A poor substitute for other arcade adventures.