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They say that alcoholism causes in excess of one million lost working days a year in Great Britain. Exact figures aren't yet available, but it's generally thought that at least that amount of time is lost annually due to the CU staff's obsession with Arkanoid. The Ed has been frequently known to hide the disk in Tony Dillon's naff HM record-ridden backpack to keep it out of the hands of crazed employees over lunch hour [and beyond - Ed].

So when Imagine's sequel, Revenge Of Doh, finally struggled through the Christmas post and landed on your desks, the tripewriters ceased their [less than - Ed] incessant chatter.

The high priest of the Mean Machine (M. Patterson, for it is he) took the sacred object in his trice-blessed mitts, and intoning the appropriate runic mysteries, booted it and we all took in our first glance. Not so good, to our horror.

It's not that programmer Peter Johnson hasn't added and enhanced the original, he has, quite a bit. For the uninitiated, despite a hokey spaceage intro screen, Arkanoid was simply a very elaborate update on the age-old Breakout concept, basically knocking out rows of bricks using - bat and ball. Of course, there were lazer bats, multi-balls, sticky-bats, elongated bats, extra life icons and bonuses to pick up too.

Revenge Of Doh added shrinking bats (a bummer), self-generating multi-bats, super hard multi-balls, double-bats, the amazing mega-lazer which cuts through every brick it touches like a knife through hot butter (except the moving bats, that is) plus a whole new array of brick arrangements and added interfering nasties.

But unfortunately, the gameplay, sprite detection and graphics let this down - badly.

For a start, where the Discovery conversion was simple, colourful and razor-sharp colourwise, Revenge Of Doh manages to be simple, colourful and seriously fuzzy. The bell vibrates in the air! Secondly, sprite detection is poor and in a game where precision is essential, bad sprite detection is frankly disastrous. And the combination of these two faults renders the gameplay unpredictable, and therefore naff.

All of which is not to say that I haven't spent quite a while on this game - I have. The original concept is so brilliantly simple, and so simply brilliant, that, warts and all, Revenge Of Doh couldn't ever be a total turkey.

But for all those who love Arkanoid, and for all those who've yet to experience it, Revenge Of Doh is a sad letdown.