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Vertigo is a strange cross between Berzerk and Jet-Pac.

It has you travelling through a maze with a large number of interconnecting rooms: these rooms contain aliens who attempt to bounce into you. Your objective is to collect seven keys which have been placed throughout the maze.

After you have killed all the aliens in a particular room, you are shown a map of the maze. This has your position, and that of the keys marked on it. Some extra lives are also available in a number of the rooms; these are also marked on the map.

Once you have collected all of the keys, they must be taken to the trunk in the top left-hand corner of the maze, and you can then exit.

Your man is equipped with a jet-pac and a laser gun; he is also incredibly large, (approximately one third of the height of a room). Although he is very well-drawn and moves smoothly, controlling him is very difficult, and the aliens have a nasty habit of bumping into various parts of his anatomy, as his size makes it almost impossible to dodge them.

For some reason, the aliens are not as well-drawn or animated as the impressive-looking rocket-man.

Vertigo appears to have a fairly limited variety of aliens; as even the small amount of rooms I visited contained aliens identical to those in other rooms.

Unfortunately, the program can also be 'broken-out of' accidentally when you are viewing the instructions or entering your name in the score table; this should not be possible! This, combined with the obvious derivative elements, has given Vertigo a tacky feel.

Overall, due to control problems and poor presentation, I must give what may have been a reasonable game a definite thumbs down.

This game appears to be a cross between Jetpac and The Pyramid. It comes from Spain, recently the breeding ground of some very nice games, and is basically a mega shoot-'em-up.

The game's graphics are clear, smooth and well-drawn, and the sound is above average. At first the game is intolerably difficult and I suppose one could easily get very bored, especially since there is an annoying little jingle every time you die.

I persevered to other rooms, but not to much satisfaction.

Just as the instructions look like they've been written using a phrasebook (I quote 'At last the man is arrived to Mars'), so this game appears to have been constructed from Ultimate's back catalogue.

Elements of Vertigo are very impressive, like the large animated main character and the number of rooms to explore.

However, the major drawbacks, of the screens being repetitive and the task you have to complete being a straightforward treasure hunt, make this a slightly disappointing program.