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Slam Ball is the first of US Gold's Americana budget range of games and is a high speed pinball game.

The pinball table itself is four scrolling screens worth of bumpers, flippers and targets. It is the targets that hold the key to the game.

There are 37 targets at the start of the game and should you manage to hit all of them within the five ball game then you proceed to the next level and get another five balls.

Clearing groups of targets also produces two floating bumpers that burst on contact with anything else. If you're quick enough and manage to hit one beore it bursts, you manage to advance your score multiplier from 1x up to 4x anything you score. Unfortunately, if you hit another floating bumper when you already have a 4x bonus, the bonus resets back to 1x.

The resulting game is a frantic effort to flip at anything that moves (usually the ball travelling at high speed) at the targets. This isn't easy as you've actually got four sets of flippers that you control at once as the display scrolls up and down the table. However, the scroll follows the ball instead of your flippers which often means you have to time a flip before you can see the flippers involved! The action is accompanied by an entertaining assortment of bleeps and tunes that, although distracting, seem a vital part of the game.

When you've completed all four levels and are tired of beating your high score you can make things more difficult for yourself by changing it to a three-ball game or take on a human opponent.

All things considered, I found Slam Ball to be great fun to play but I can't help thinking that a computer pinball game should have a lot more in it.