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Shall I tell you one of the most annoying things about being around in the Eighties? Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was everywhere. It seemed like he was in every movie that came out, every kid and his dad wanted to be him and the school playground was full of boys talking in his robotic Terminator voice. And for practically every bad movie he was in, there was an army of publishers snapping at the heels of the movie company to acquire the licence to produce an equally bad spin-off game. Total Recall, Terminator, Red Heat, The Running Man... on and on the infernal list goes. But the Electron, being a little bit less of a mainstream computer, was spared them. Until Superior got hold of the licence to Predator.

Predator is a peculiar game. It's set in the jungle with Arnie (whom you play, as if you couldn't have guessed that already!) as a commando on the trail of "something" distinctly alien. As you run left, the screen scrolls with you, yet you can't go back. The jungle is peppered with soldiers taking pot-shots at you. They emerge from the windows of huts that you pass, and up out of the ground underneath your feet. And, every now and then, you encounter a dead body and the screen goes black to signify the Predator looking at you. The Predator, if it locks you in its sights will kill you instantly, so you have to "outwit" it. The best method seems to be to crouch next to the next body. I suppose it then can't identify you as alive. Somehow.

The game lacks any real addiction and the controls are bewildering. You can shoot at six angles and you can also run up and down the scrolling area by holding, for example, up whilst running right. You can run out of the way of bullets and jump over bullets. But it's so cumbersome that you can barely be bothered. The trouble is that positioning Arnie in the 'right' place to shoot out each of the bad guys means that they quite often manage to shoot him once or twice whilst you're attempting merely to get him angled correctly. If you just do a kamikaze-style charge instead, just running through the bad guys and forcing the jungle to scroll them off-screen, you can often actually get much further...!

The graphics are colourful but have an odd texture to them, looking rather like they have been converted down from a more powerful computer without the tender loving care this process requires.

The game comes from the talented Peter Scott, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as refined as many of his other creations. More like the original game on some other format was handed to him and he was just instructed to "retain as much of it as you can".

Overall, it's not dreadful. With enough memorising of the layout of the scrolling levels, most players will be able to make some progress. It's sort of as you would expect from a big movie licence game. Namely, bland. But (of course) it sold thousands of copies based on its name alone. Even children too young to see the film had Schwarzenegger-fever, guaranteeing Superior's coffers got a boost in time for Christmas 1989. If looking for a second-hand copy of it, expect to pay £3-£5 (for both the original version and budget re-release). Also appeared on Play It Again Sam 14, which usually sells for around £10.