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I'm not usually one to boast. I mean, I've never even mentioned my Cycling Proficiency certificate, have I? However, there are two things I'm proud of - one if that I've never seen Dallas.

You might not think it's much to be proud of, but you'll be glad I haven't seen it when you've finished this review of Oil's Well from Sierra On-Line. Just think of all the bad jokes you'll be spared.

Yes, you've struck oil in your back garden but getting it out isn't as easy as you might have thought. The other oil barons are jealous and are trying to sabotage your operation. They've planted oozies and land mines in your oil fields so you'd better take care of your drilling equipment.

You start at the top of the field and must manoeuvre down, eating up the oil pellets with your drill bit. The oozies move along the seams and will destroy your pipe if they hit it. However, your drill bit will devour them.

There are also travelling land mines which are the opposite of oozies. They are harmless to your pipe but your drill bit will detonante them on contact and get blown up. When I add that there are also petromins, special oil nuggets (?) that slow down the oozies, you may begin to think that it all sounds a little familiar. Is this "Pac-Man meets JR", you ask yourself?

The answer is partially in the affirmative, because the game obviously owes something to the Pac-Man tradition of maze munching and power pills.

However, the fact that you are permanently linked to your refinery at the top of the screen makes a lot of difference. As you guide your drill bit down through the seams in order to clear the screen of oil pellets, the oozies and land mines are moving horizontally along them.

This means you are constantly having to retract your bit in order to avoid it being oozied.

However, you must be a little discriminating - if you retract and contact a land mine, you'll lose one of your three bits. If you clear the screen - sorry, oil field - of oil pellets you move on to the next. There are eight in all and as you might imagine, they are increasingly difficult to drain of oil.

The sounds can be toggled off and the game can be paused while you take a breath. High scores are saved, but the scoreboard can be erased if you want to hide the fact that you've been playing.

At first you're offered a choice of three levels of difficulty, so presumably there are 3 x 8 = 24 levels altogether.

Although there's nothing on the pack to suggest it, you need a joystick to play this game. Well, you could try with paddles, but you're never offered a keyboard option.

The drill bit moves in the direction last indicated by the joystick, so the only way to go somewhere else is to retract to the last choice-point (by pressing the joystick button) and re-positioning the joystick.

If it's hard to understand, it's probably because it's hard to perform. Oil's Well is one of those games that take a bit of getting used to before you can enjoy it. However, once you've got the knack, it's a great game that will keep you occupied for hours. It's been very popular in our household, despite being little more than an umbilical Pac-Man.

Nobody has suggested that we dig up our back garden yet... which is why I've resisted the temptation to say that "oil's well that ends well"!