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Arkanoid is the old favourite Breakout brought bang up to date. You may have seen Arkanoid in the arcades - well, this is a near perfect conversion. As in Breakout, the idea is to bounce your ball (or energy bolt in this case) against the wall with your bat (they say it's a spacecraft) and knock out the bricks. This would be trivial if it were not for the descending aliens and the resilience of some bricks.

Aliens are destroyed if hit with a ball or bat, but divert your ball when it hits them.

There are eight colours of normal bricks plus silver and gold ones. Silver ones take two hits to destroy (more on later levels) while gold ones are indestructible!

The game starts off simply with a single straight wall of bricks but soon gets harder. The ball also speeds up alarmingly, making things very tricky.

Luckily, things aren't as nasty as they seem - some of the bricks when hit turn into capsules that drop down the screen. They take effect if you catch them, for instance the 'S' capsule slows the ball down and the 'C' lets you catch the ball.

Graphically, the game is simple but good, although the scoreboard could be improved. Stippled colours very effectively make up different shades for some of the bricks, and clever use is made of colour on the silver and gold bricks. The sound is also effectively used.

Points against the game are there is no sound-off key; the aliens often fly over the bricks; the ball often seems to go through the bat, and there is no analogue control, making rapid movements difficult.

Overall, the game is very addictive and well worth the money. It's especially nice seeing a BBC game using a full Mode 2 screen with no colour changing!