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During my recent introduction to the world of pinball (courtesy of Mr Rignall and certain Brighton arcades), I was dragged away from Williams' Cyclone to this Sega coin-op which puts three fully-featured flip-screen pintables on a video screen. As well as simulating left and right flipper controls, Time Scanner has a plate which you can grab and wobble at frantic moments to jostle the "table". Basically, it all amounts to being the closest you can get to Pinball without having ball bearings and dodgy flippers.

Most of the arcade game's features have been brought across to the ST conversion in spirit but, further to these, Activision has added a Breakout-style game which appears as a final bonus table.

The ball starts in the usual spring-loaded launcher, which repeatedly pulls itself back until you hit a flipper key. Time the launch right, though, because the harder you hit the ball the more bonus points you get, with a full-strength sprang netting 50,000 points. Each half of the table has its own set of flippers, usually grouped in pairs and hidden in crannies in the tables are the Time Tunnels which carry the ball between tables.

The first table you see is Volcano, which, as well as the usual bumpers, rollovers, bonus lane changes and drop targets, features two chutes leading from a volcano at the bottom of the screen. Knock the ball up one of the chutes and the virtual Vesuvius erupts, lighting a letter in the word VOLCANO.

Saqqara is the name of the second table, which is vaguely similar to Volcano, except it's done out in sky blue with a pavement effect, and has a ball capture hole. If you should knock a ball into the hole, it appears in a tube in the bottom half of the screen and you get to reshoot. If enough balls get captured, out they all shoot at once, bringing multi-ball fun to your flippers.

The remaining table is called Ruins because it's a rather nice stony Egyptian affair, in which you have to light the letters in the word MYSTERY.

While you're moving between tables, the last table settings are always stored. So, if you're just about to hit the final bonus letter when the ball unexpectedly trundles down the Time Tunnel, don't fret, as things will be just as you left them when you return to that table.

All in all, Time Scanner is a fairly decent translation of the coin-op, although it is lacking in a few departments.

Similar to the ST version in the main, apart from slightly better sound, but it's hardly worth the extra fiver.

Not a bad conversion of the cult video pinballer, but nigglesome flaws and a lack of addictive gameplay let Time Scanner down.