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Being the Guardian of Imagination, Protector of Creative Thought and Defender of Positive Action is a pretty tall order for any ant-like Ninja creature, so it's hardly surprising that Zool, the ant-like Ninja creature who is all those things in this game, was distracted from the controls of his spacecraft and ended up crashing somewhere in the Nth Dimension!

Before the crash, Zool had been on the trail of his arch-nemesis, Krool, who has been busy using his power of anti-imagination to turn previously innocuous household objects into raving assassins. Now Zool has to get through seven platform-packed plains of the Nth Dimension, collecting a quota of untransformed objects, then finding the mystical medallion which gets him to the next level.

Oh Zool hurry! It looks like Krool has even turned his anti-imagination powers on the plot of your game...

Zool is made up of seven levels, consisting of three stages apiece. Any of them look familiar?

1. Sweet World
   The Liquorice Allsorts are rising up in murderous fury! Leap up the melting caramel bridges to escape and climb aboard the floating Flakes on the chocolate rivers to reach the end, where the buzzing Hum-Bug boss awaits.
2. Music World
   Home to thousands of living instruments... of pain! Float around on brassy blasts from trumpets, and bounce on bass drums to collect the hi-fi items which open the exit.
3. Fruit World
   Bananas! Bananas! Whole bunches of 'em! Even if they don't cause a slip-up in the midst of this world, you still have to skin the big banana boss. Beware, also, the impudent carrots and the flying peapods, obviously on holiday from neighbouring Vegetable World
4. Tool World
   Whirling drill bits poke through the walls and disembodied axe blades drop on Zool's head. The chainsaws may be a bit toothless but they're not to be toyed with, and don't loiter near the gooey puddles which contain Zool-eating worms.
5. Toy World
   Tanks, robots, bouncing balls, marbles, dive-bombing paper aeroplanes! It's all too much to cope with... or is it?
6. Fairground
   The candy floss and toffee apples sure look tasty... but they only taste of death! Let the hammer and bell slideshows give Zool a lift, but beware the squashing power of the mallets!
7. Desert Island
   An idyllic setting... for the toughest level of all! Walking flowers and evil bug critters pose problems for Zool here, and mind the poisonous bubbles too!

Zool was originally on Amiga for those who wanted a Sonic-style game on floppy disk.

Guide Zool through mazes of platforms, collecting enough bonus objects to make the exit appear. Avoid or shoot the bouncing foes.

A couple of issues ago, I heavily penalised The Addams Family on the Megadrive owing to the fact that (i) it's over a year since it was released on other formats, and (ii) the platform action is unoriginal, tedious and dull.

The same can be said for Zool. On the Amiga, it was a first class game, successfully capturing the atmosphere of console platformers like Sonic The Hedgehog. The thing is, Megadrive games of this genre have come a long way since then - this is nowhere near as good as, say, Flashback, Rocket Knight Adventures or Cool Spot. At best, Zool is a very unattractive offer, especially when superior platform games (for example, Alisia Dragoon) are available for just £20 - less than half the price of this!

It's not hard to see why Amiga owners lapped this up, because Zool is a colourful and fast platform game. But us Megadrive players have colourful and fast platform games coming out of our ears and even compared to older games like Sonic and Robocod, Zool looks derivative and out-dated.

Levels made up of sweets, toys, musical instruments and so on have been done before on the Megadrive in Robocod and Cool Spot so as soon as the game starts you get that feeling of deja vu.

The gameplay is practically the same as Bubsy's or Cool Spot's - collect enough objects to let you get through the exit - and it's just as weak. But whilst Cool Spot at least had great graphics and music to distract you from the simplistic action, Zool ranks as average on both these counts and has nothing to make you say, "Wow! I didn't expect that to happen!", so it's ironic that the instructions bill him as the Guardian of Imagination and 'Protector of Creative Thought'. It's not a terrible game, I admit, but there are so many similar platformers around these days, a new one has got to have something original.

Zool has no innovations, and there is no reason to buy it.

Presentation 66%
P. Reasonable little intro sequence, though it's nothing spectacular, and doesn't really tell you much.

Graphics 75%
P. Technically good, with decent parallax scrolling...
N. ...but it's not particularly impressive. The Chupa Chupa logos on Sweet World look pretty tacky.

Sound 74%
P. Jolly, bouncy tunes back the action. The effects aren't bad either.

Playability 70%
P. It's fast and reasonably playable.
N. The gameplay is soooo derivative, and it's not even a very interesting derivative. No innovations here at all.

Lastability 61%
P. Plenty of stages.
N. Compared to other games, the levels are simplistic and tedious. You'll have had enough after about an hour of play.

Overall 67%
Zool might have impressed Amiga owners, but most Megadrive players will probably already have something in their game rack which is practically the same, only a lot better!