Over the past few months there have been a few good, new and fairly original games released for our computer. Here we have Bust Out, which as the title gives away, is another clone of the costly arcade favourite Break Out. With games like Lucifers Kingdom around, surely Break Out clones be sent off to collect their old age pension?

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Just for those of you who have never seen a version of Break Out - there might be somebody out there! - here's a brief synopsis. You play a bat, a simple amoeba like structure which moves crab fashion right and left along the bottom of the screen. You have but one objective in life and that is to align yourself underneath a bouncing ball. If you do this correctly the ball will fly back up the screen and crash into a hefty wall of bricks knocking one or several out. You must rid the screen of these assorted coloured bricks before losing your allotted balls.

Well, that's the outline of the game but what about extras for the 1988 version? Graphics - well, you can hardly expect them to be of precision detail: a bat, a ball and a brick wall doesn't exactly need intricate hi-res graphics.

Bust Out looks as good as it probably could do with multicoloured layers of bricks.

Dragonfire have done fairly well to add extra features where they have had a chance. Firstly you don't press the start button to see the ball start whizzing around, there are nine speed levels to choose from - with so many to pick from there must be one to suit your level. If though even slow is too fast you can increase the size of the bat with a choice that ranges from the quite hefty to minute, where the ball is only slightly smaller than the bat!

Not only can you change your weaponry but you can alter the brick size that you can either slowly chip away or hack out g real wedges. Other little extras include the option of 1 or 2 players, joystick control, steerable ball and extra lives.

Also there is even a burst of music when each thousand points have been clocked up which is quite pleasant. Movement is smooth, fast and to my knowledge bug-free which adds up to an addictive game.

Instructions are comprehensive, printed on three sides of A4. ne small yet important factor of the instructions are that it tells you out of the levels which is slowest. Although you realise this after one game, when I've loaded up I've often forgotten and have pfayed so many games where no indication is given. Despite being well explained I still don 1 ! really like instructions that don't come in the cassette box because they stand a better chance of getting lost.

There's just one irritation in the game when the ball gets stuck behind the back of the wall for what seems like an eon while you wait patiently. I've actually only ever played one other version of Break Out on the Dragon but Bust Out is by far the better. As a version of such an old game it does everything that can be expected. As for the rating I feel that all it can be given is 5 due to its aged look. Despite this it is still well produced and excellent value.