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In ELITE's conversion of the arcade game Paperboy it's up to you, as an all American skoolkid, to deliver the early morning newspapers fighting against fantastic odds. Negotiating your BMX bike around what seems to be a rather unsavoury neighbourhood, hazards have to be avoided - but lots of points are waiting to be won for accurate lobbing of newspapers.

Certain households on your round don't order the Daily Sun, the paper which you are so diligently trying to deliver. This is sad, but you can get your own back on these non-subscribers. Pedalling through the diagonally scrolling landscape, points can be collected bybunging a newsprint missile through a window on a house with a dark door - the occupants don't take the Sun. Well-aimed newspapers can result in broken window panes, chopped up tomb stones and ruffled dustbin lids, too. If you're feeling particularly vindictive then grannies can be zapped out of their bath-chairs as they take the morning air, boys can be knocked off their mopeds and flowers flattened.

Households that order the newspaper get special treatment - their newspapers must be accurately thrown so that they land in the mail box. Two hundred and fifty points are scored for each paper safely delivered. The papers in your delivery bag are displayed on a panel to the right of the screen, and extra ammo can be collected by cycling over the boxes of newsprint dotted around the pavements.

But there's more to being a paperboy than just chucking papers around the town. Careful cycling is called for to negotiate a variety of obstacles including dustbins, fire hydrants and garden ornaments. And then there's the people... old folk seem to walk into your path deliberately; workmen can't hear you because of their ear-plugs, and have to be avoided. Skateboarders can be fairly lethal as they scoot around at breakneck speed, and runaway tyres and exploding bombs also crop up from time to time. Contact with the nasties results in a crash and the loss of one of your five lives - as in the original, a scrolling message reminds you what a silly boy you have been...

Each day of the week, the paper round has to be attempted before paperboy can go out to play on the BMX track at the end of town. Bonus points can be collected for hitting targets dotted around the BMX course with a well-aimed newspaper.

At the end of the day's work the paper shop prepares a report on progress. For every paper wrongly delivered, a house cancels its orderand if too many of the houses cancel it's the sack! However, on subsequent rounds if all the papers are correctly delivered you win back one customer, but the game gets that little bit harder on subsequent days. It really is mean on these streets...

Control keys: Q accelerate, A brake, O left, P right, N throw paper
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Keyboard play: fast and responsive
Use of colour: monochromatic, for the most part, so as to avoid clashes
Graphics: nice characters, with fair scrolling
Sound: tunes, with the usual spot effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: scrolling township