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Well I never. Cyberblast - from the company which brought us the impressive blaster Battle Squadron - turns out to be a version of that old Atari arcade fave, Gauntlet, but with a science fiction theme. It's not an Alien Breed Mike Yarwood impression of one, you understand, but a full-blown Bobby Davro.

Unlike the Gauntlet arcade original (and the Amiga conversion of its sequel for that matter) Cyberblast supports a maximum of only two players simultaneously. These brave souls (or a single hero) run around a series of every-way scrolling mazes, avoiding and shooting adversaries and collecting treasures for bonus points. But Cyberblast has you collecting crystals before you can leave, whereas in Gauntlet you can simply head for the exit to move on to the next level.

The Cyberblast aliens emerge from incubators which are best blasted (Gauntlet has generators) and the beasts behave pretty much like the adversaries in Gauntlet.

Instead of collecting spells along the way. It's like-minded equipment including zappers (to destroy any adversaries shown on screen), bombs and grenades (which are both similar to the zappers only they also remove some areas of the walls), powershots (10 more powerful shots), stunners (which temporarily freeze the enemy) and magnets (which temporarily repel the enemy). Dynamite behaves much like the bombs, only it's shot instead of picked up.

Teleporters take you from one area of the map too another, and ID Cards not keys remove force fields as opposed to barriers. There are even special items for the taking (or avoiding) too. You can find yourself stunned or weakened or, better still, in possession of bonus points or more time to complete the level.

Cyberblast, er, isn't a disaster. It plays well enough but it's not far enough removed from the original Gauntlet idea to be worthwhile. I'm all for new angles on tried and tested concepts, but Cyberblast's authors should have made a lot more of the science fiction aspect. They could have at least given us some decent new fun weapons.

An uninspired, overpriced and 'spacey' Gauntlet clone. The US Gold conversion of Gauntlet II with its four-player option is mode fun and a third of the price on the Kixx label.