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Hang this man. By his tongue.

Phoenix specialise in this sort of thing - an arcade and an adventure on the same tape; no adventure until you fetch a code from the end of the arcade game. The chances of lasting more than five seconds of the arcade are roughly on a par with the life expectancy of a polar bear in a volcano.

Their last little gem, Attack On Windscale for Auntie's favourite machine, the BBC, was so hideously difficult that the adventure never saw the light of day - so there was a certain feeling of relief when a packet was found supposedly containing the code. "Open only in dire emergency," it said. "Cause I'm a good boy, always goes by the book, that sort of thing. I opened the packet while the game was loading. Inside was a copy of the instructions (useful that, saves all the fuss and bother of looking on the back of the case!) but no code for the adventure. So crack that arcade game, boys!

This is totally impossible. When the screen comes up, you're standing on a bridge with a large black spider on it. Below, in the water is a rather ill-mannered gobbing fish and a bee in the middle. This has to be dodged while at the same time jumping over the spider as it patrols the bridge and keeping a wary eye on the bee should it decide that a good parking place for its sting might be your butt. Meanwhile, you have to pick bricks from a pile and drop them into the water. The real problem in this game is the fish. It always gobs at you and it always hits. In one game, I lost all my lives literally as the screen came up (total playing time three seconds) which strikes me as more than a bit unfair.

I don't mind a difficult game, even prefer it, but this is daft. As for the adventure, well, how the hell should I know?!