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Our memory of the event is a tad hazy, but apparently The One gave Ooops Up a 91% rating when it appeared on full-price many moons ago. Times change, however, and so do gaming standards, and unfortunately this game, though still a charmer in the playability stakes, hasn't grown old very gracefully.

What we have here is little more than an uninspired but nevertheless competent rip-off of Ocean's Pang, where a little man runs along the bottom of the screen, bursting bouncing balloons with a harpoon gun, in a cross between Asteroids and Space Invaders. In Ooops Up, however, you travel not around the world but around the universe, visiting various planets and destroying the spherical asteroids that replace Pang's balloons. For each planet you clear you win a piece of a spaceship - collect all 99 parts and you can go home, or something.

Graphics aside, there's very little to differentiate Ooops Up from the coin-op conversion that it is obviously plagiarises - even the power-ups (time freeze, extra weapons, etc) and extra features (ladders and platforms to run about on) are identical. And with Pang already on budget, comparisons are unavoidable. And in this test Ooops Up comes off the worse...

On paper there's not much in it, but once you've played both it becomes clear that the original is still the best, boasting smoother control, nicer presentation and a higher level of polish all round. Ooops Up is a nice game, but even with its smart sampled rendition of the Snap record of the same name, there's really no reason to buy this so long as Pang is available. We think you get the message.