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Apparently, in the good ol' USA, Klax is something akin to a national institution - if you don't Klax very often, your street credibility rating is on par with that of a public lavatory attendant! This is all quite strange for a game where the main object just involves creating some nice, pretty patterns.

Perhaps I should elaborate slightly. You control a paddle that scoops up coloured tiles from the on-screen ramp and arrange them in the bins at the foot of the screen into patterns. Patterns make points, and that's Klax's main objective.

A bog standard Klax is just three tiles of the same colour in a row in any direction. Klaxes involving more tiles usually give you more points, and the tiles disappear once you've "klaxed" them. That being the case, you can rest tiles on top of one another, so that when you've klaxed one, the tiles fall down to immediately form another klax. It requires a degree of skill, but you get *big* points for your efforts!

There are one hundred waves in Klax, and the object of each wave is slightly different. Klax Waves simply demand that you complete a number of klaxes, but others like Diagonal Waves, Tile Waves and Point Waves have differing objectives (making diagonal klaxes, clearing a set number of tiles and scoring a set number of points).

But beware! The onslaught of tiles running down the ramp just gets faster and faster, so be sure to get the big points early! When all the bins are full it's game over - so get klaxing!

Make no mistake, Klax is a pixel perfect copy of the arcade original! Everything that made the coin-op look and feel like an absolute dream has been incorporated into this PC Engine conversion, even down to the rounds of applause and the sampled "ooohhhh!" when you pull off a rather ingenious multiple Klax!

The concept itself relies on pure brain-power, but even if you're as thick as two short planks you'll find a great deal of fun can be gleaned from this little gem. For a game that isn't visually exciting by any stretch, you'll find that this is probably one of the greatest Engine cards available.

You'd need to be a gibbering imbecile to avoid this, so buy it now - you won't regret it!