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For those of you who missed it on its initial release (2015, fact fans!), Matra currently have a physical cassette version of Pentacorn Quest, a Spectrum 128K only platform game which instructs you to recover the five magic golden acorns to possess "great power". The game is in English but, as is too-usual-for-comfort with Matra, the instructions are badly translated from Spanish. In fact, not only are they badly translated, but you get the distinct impression that the original ones are a load of waffle too. It's a pretty inauspicious start to a game when you read that "all previous questers have returned with a terrible smell of feet" whilst you're waiting for it to load. Presumably it means defeat. Or maybe it's Spanglish humour?

The game itself is a Churrera creation but to my mind one of the better ones. The game doesn't throw you around the playing area if you get into danger and it includes the jumping feature which varies the height with the length of time you depress the jump key. These are the type of platformers I like - the ones where the hero is firmly under control at all times. You need to be quite deft with the jump key in certain places too, as the author has had the rather nasty habit of putting those acorns very close to spikes or pointy-looking stalagmites.

Pentacorn Quest is a hard game. Firstly because you only get five lives but secondly because colliding with a patrolling nasty immedately robs you of one of them. There's no energy meter, and there are plenty of low ceilings and jumps that need to be perfectly timed lest you get it wrong and plummet straight into a bad guy. As far as I can tell - I didn't get very far - there's no way to save a game in progress, which would mean death equals having to start the quest all over again from the beginning. If so, I can imagine that would be very frustrating.

One of the aspects of the game that will probably please Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Rick Dangerous fans is that there are buttons everywhere that operate hidden platforms and stalagmites. You can jump on each of them to make progress. There's none of the unfairness of Rick Dangerous here though; deft fingerwork will see you make quite good progress. Warning: sometimes a button in one location has an effect in another - watch all areas of the screen every carefully whenever you "use" something you've found.

All in all, Pentacorn Quest's graphics aren't bad, and I can think of worse ways of whiling away a few hours than pushing buttons, collecting acorns and avoiding things. It's just a shame that Matra is starting to become associated with one Churrera release after another.