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Maniac Mower is one of those games that is truly annoying because it doesn't have any right to exist. You can make it sound "good" (in the same way that you can any other game) by waxing lyrical like this: "Maniac Mower is a game of pure arcade skill in which you must mow the lawn of a garden, avoiding the broken bottles and other hazards. But they're not your only problem. For in the garden next door is another mower, which will relentlessly home-in on you unless you can force it to crash or double-back on itself."

The trouble is that description, whilst not inaccurate, is a con.

What you actually get in Maniac Mower is a short game written entirely in the Electron's Basic language. The sprites are all 8x8 redefined blocks, the game plods along with little of the feel of a genuine arcade game, the responsiveness to controls is laughable and the 'rules' make no sense whatsoever.

If this were the Eighties, you would have acquired Maniac Mower from a dodgy-looking advert in the Acorn press listing "Kansas City's 8th/9th/10th Spectacular Sale". A description, much like the one above, would tempt you to send off a fiver for a cassette, which would arrive in one of a number of colours with the name of the game stamped on the spine.

Almost all of Kansas's wares were terrible but Maniac Mower is spectacularly bad. The gig is up as soon as the tape reels stop spinning. Text screens tell you nothing, but take you an age to scroll through... and then the game itself starts. The first thing you notice is the garish colours. The next thing the sluggishness of the response. If you try to persevere a bit with the controls, you will learn that you can just about control your blue blob if you press a direction key (ZX*?) a second before you actually need the blob to do something.

Only then does it actually hit you. What's the actual objective? What are you meant to be doing? The instructions indicate that your job is to mow the lawn. However, the last time I mowed a lawn the mower didn't explode when I moved it over an already-mown area! The penny drops. This is actually a poorly-disguised version of Snake!

Maniac Mower is the type of game that you pray has at least one redeeming quality. Unfortunately, the intelligence level of the AI enemy mower is so low that it's less of a worry than the clunky game controls. And the only reason you might get offed by the 'martial arts expert' who walks a path through the centre of the screen is because the garish colours make him hard to see.

Electron User reviewed the game on release and, to their credit, called it out as a disappointment. However, its reviewer was determined to find a use for it and indicated that, considering it is in Basic, the garish colours could easily be changed and people may well enjoy 'tinkering' with it to make it better. To tell someone who has shelled out on a lemon like this that their remedy is to modify it is to blame the victim for their own misfortune.

Shame on all involved in putting this on the market. Comfort yourself that, although it's difficult to find, it nevertheless never changes hands for very much even now. Expect to pay £3 or so.