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Walk with me... back... back... baaaaack... to 1983, when software houses were feverishly trying to work out another variation on the Pac-Man theme to launch at suspecting Spectrum owners. And now, this classic, if comatose, genre has been revived once again, this time for the benefit (?) or 16-bit owners.

Loriciels has hitched its game to the ultimate in twee storylines, about invading aliens infecting 99 landscapes of the planet Skweez' land with blue sweeticide. Skweek, fluffy ball of orange heroism that he is, has to walk over the tiles which make up each scrolling continent, changing them from blue to pink. When the whole landscape is pink, it's on to the next continent, and so it goes on.

Making life difficult are the equally cuddly Skarks, who appear from the jaws of transporters and waddle after Skweek with as much menace as cuddly Skark sprites can muster. Luckily for Skweek he's armed with a zonking gun and, well, it zonks most Skarks out of existence.

Weapon upgrades appear in the landscape from time to time, providing four-way and rapid firepower and Skark freezers. Other collectables include running shoes to speed things up, extra lives and bonus points. Certain tiles also have special functions, ice tiles keep you slip slidin' away, short cut tiles transport you from one end of the playfield to the other, cracked tiles disappear after you walk on them and bomb tiles explode, raking eight surrounding tiles with them.

All in all, that's just about enough to save Skweek from being a cute little mediocrity. However, it still squats squarely in the "hmm, well, not bad, but it's not going to set the world on fire, is it?" classification. It's well-programmed, but the gameplay's pretty insubstantial and not the sort of stuff that's going to keep you at the joystick till the early hours.

Skweek's cutesy, colourful graphics, intrinsic jolliness and fundamentally simple gameplay suggest that it would be rather more popular with the younger gamesplayer. I suspect that more hardened joystick-jocks will find that Skweek is not really the sort of game that they would willingly spend £20 on. Good for softies or girlies though.

A cute and cuddly sort of Pac-Man variant, but not the apex in addictive gameplay. Probably one for younger players only.

Incredibly, even cuter sprites than on the ST and Amiga versions, but suffers from a flip-screen rather than a scrolling play area.

The same gameplay as the ST version, but slightly more impressive graphics and sound. Still nothing earth-shattering, though.