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Codemasters have made something of a name for themselves as purveyors of cute, cartoony arcade games, so it comes as a bit of a surprise to find that CJ's Elephant Antics is in fact... a cute, cartoony arcade game. Okay, so it's not much of a surprise at all.

This particular cute cartoony arcade game concerns, in a rather ideologically sound manner, a baby elephant (CJ) who escapes from a plane while being transported to a zoo and has to travel through Europe and Africa to return to his home and family. Europe and Africa in this case consists of four large scrolling levels of maze-cum-platform action, with various enemies and traps conspiring to keep CJ from his objective, including gendarmes in France, lions in Africa, and penguins in Switzerland (?) as well as the ubiquitous end-of-level guardians.

The graphics in CJ's Elephant Antics have a slightly crude look to them, but CJ himself is a highly loveable little sprite, defending himself by spitting peanuts down his truck at his adversaries and floating down long drops with the aid of his yellow-and-green umbrella. The screen scrolls smoothly in all directions, but in general the game seems to lack a little in the way of visual sparkle. Musically, it's atrocious, with a hideous tune that we'll mention no more lest I get all depressed, and there are no sound effects at all, which is a bit of a shame.

The two-player mode is very strange, as both players play simultaneously but the screen only follows player one, so close co-operation is essential if you want to get anywhere (alternatively, play the game completely blind for a real, not to mention, very silly challenge). Control could be a smidgen more sensitive too, but despite all these faults the game is actually very playable.

With nine lives and only four levels (although they are very big levels) it won't take forever to complete, but it'll be long enough for you to get your money's worth.

Nothing special, sure, but a long way short of being totally crap too.