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They say, they do, that children's TV contains the very best exmaples and the very worst excesses of that particular medium's output.

Lawyers relax - I'm not going to name names, just say that Blockbusters is a popular quiz game pumped out at that time of day.

If you've seen the programme, skip forward secure in the knowledge that the program is an accurate simulation of all the main foci of interest, If you haven't, then pay attention.

There is a matrix of letters on a net of hexagons. A contestant, of which there are two teams, chooses a letter.

Bob Holness (a modern hero of our times - more on him later) asks a question, the answer to which begins with the chosen letter. If the contestant answers correctly, the hexagon lights up in his/her colour. If not, the other gets a chance to supply the correct answer, which if successfully produced, results in the hexagon lighting up appropriately.

The winners are the first team to link up a line of light across the board; one team top to bottom, the other side to side.

Once enough games have been won, the team responsible goes forward to the Gold Run.

This time there are a number of letters in each square, and the answer to the questions is a well-known POS. I'm sorry, you ran out of time, the answer was Phrase Or Saying.

The inimitable Bob Holness is, Blockbuster fans please note, all there. Well, his head is. Digitised. In several poses. He does a passable impression of Max Headroom, too, his little ickle head jolting from side to side as the questions, Trivial Pursuit style, chug out at speech rate.

Wait too long before answering, and the buzzer sounds for your opponent to leap in and grab the hexagon.

A certain facility at typing is needed for the Gold Run, because there are only sixty seconds to answer at least five questions of two or three words each.

There's a genuine gameshow big clock ticking away the time in the corner, but don't worry if you can't type quite that fast. Some faintly clever logic manages to unscramble misspellings so that - most of the time - the computer guesses correctly what it was that you were on about.

The final touch to send the addict off on to a different astral plane is the faithful renditioning of the theme tune through the tiny Amstrad speaker. It's all good stuff. There aren't any of the famously plush Blockbuster prizes though...

Computer quizzes in general need to have a good variety of questions, and Blockbuster has extra stocks hidden further along the tape.

At some point (after a goodly number of games, it should be said), a prompt appears for the players to play the tape and another batch loads in with little fuss.

Put down that joystick. Pick up that dictionary (and throw it at the kid brother who wants to play Barbarian - looking things up is cheating). It's time to play Blockbusters! Do I get Bob's job now?

Across the land, a nation titters, "I'd like a P please, Bob". A quick game with none of the false bonhomie (now there's a good Blockbusters word) of the more "adult" versions, it's got secret fans all over the place.

And the game is as good as you've going to get. As in all good computer versions of a Real Thing, the Domark variant has captured the atmosphere.

Her Indoors and the l'il sister were up until the smallest of the small hours playing this one and once I'd reclaimed my Amstrad I can see why.

It's so easy to be cynical, but the sheer ludicrosity (see note for bonhomie) of a miniature Bob Holness will win over the hardest heart. A goodie.

The good news is that this does not require you to learn the pathetic hand jive they use on the telly when they have run a bit short.

The bad news is that the keyboard scan is distinctly dodgy.

This is a reasonable game to play in a crowd, very much of the Trivial Pursuit genre. It is still a tarted up board game, but I'm not averse to that.

The board in Blockbusters can be lit with a letter, a solid white ground or a cyan-like blue. It is such a device which was used on an American programme.

To illuminate the board in America three projectors were used for each letter. When the show (and I'm not sure it was Blockbusters) was imported, the set designer asked what was wrong with light bulbs.

The US set designed explained. His brother-in-law sold projectors. All of which tells you nothing of the game. It's quite good, but you can't shoot at anything.