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Hopper is one of my all time favourites having been around in both BBC and Electron versions since the dawn of both machines. Perhaps its popularity has been partly due to the fact that it was also one of the original arcade games that everyone used to play in pubs, clubs and amusement arcades in those pre-home computer days.

The object of the game is to hop your frog, coloured green of course, across a busy motorway onto the riverbank avoiding the crushing wheels of four lanes of congested and fast-moving traffic. Fast-moving logs and turtles' backs provide the only refuge as you leap from one to the other in an effort to jump carefully into one of the five froggy lairs. Fail at any point and you're a gonner! Of course you do have the three obligatory lives and once you have successfully transferred five frogs into their lairs, they disappear at two hundred points a go.

The game restarts at this point but is of course much more difficult! This time you must avoid the snake that crawls along the riverbank, beware of submerging turtles as you leap onto their backs and look out for a hungry crocodile that moves invisibly from lair to lair!

Too simple? I forgot to tell you there is a time limit to all this, a clock which counts rapidly down from 400 in about fifteen seconds, and if you're not safely home by then well bye bye froggy!

Another nice aspect of Hopper is the musical accompaniment which sounds good even on the Elk.

A joystick is best but otherwise four keys are enough to move froggy left, right, forwards and backwards, so there are no problems with knotted fingers.

As a simple relaxing family game I reckon you can't go far wrong with this one.

Bruce Smith