Why play a clone when you can play the real thing? Released almost exactly a year ago this is the game that re-established Hewson. A CU Screen Star and rightly so, it combined blasting with strategy and made you forget it was a flip screen jobbie. Beautiful graphics, neat explosions and 'just one more go' gameplay make this re-release of the month no probs.

This looks distinctly East European to us. Perhaps it's because of the rather dry, intense logic puzzles that confront you when it's loaded up or the fact that all the people involved in making it are called Srzelobenovsky - and that's only their first name.

Definitely one for the brainier types. Shoot-'em-up addicts need not apply.

We're going back more than two years with this one. Just when the preposterously named He-Man and his other badly animated cronies were approaching world domination they turned their attention to the home computer scene.

US Gold released an adventure and an arcade game in an attempt to swamp the market with the nasty things, but they failed. It's the arcade game released as a cheapo here and it's not difficult to see why: uninspired platform jumping and a few puzzles along with lacklustre sound and graphics condemned it to obscurity where it should have been allowed to remain.

Aaarrgghh!!! It's another game based on a naff toy. Unsurprisingly it's a naff game too. It's a re-release of the old Ariolasoft title and really you don't want anything to do with it. Passe.

Another rave from the grave this one. Still one of the best racing game to grace the C64. There's plenty of solid grand prix style racing to be had here with pitstops too. Well worth a look.

There are two surprising things about this game. The first is that it doesn't have the word simulator in the title, and the second is that Ninja Massacre isn't a beat-'em-up.

Believe it or not, it's a Gauntlet clone! Mass oriental combat is how it describes it, but you don't need to be a genius to see that it isn't. But you weren't going to buy it with a title like that anyway, were you?

Not a shoot-'em-up or a Gauntlet clone, but instead the first outright clone we've seen of Cybernoid. Guide your ship through a top secret South Pacific air force base and rid it of the mercenaries, who in less than hours will be in control of the base's terrifying cruise missile arsenal.

Naturally, this doesn't have the polish or the colour of Hewson's original, but it's still a challenge. A badly timed release.

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We like the scenario of this one for a change. Joe Lebrinkski's lower East Side gym is under threat from a consortium of property developers.

The gym's fate is to be decided by a number of fights between your hungry young pugilists and theirs.

The graphics are reasonable, with some biggish characters, but gameplay is unspectacular with lots of joystick waggling and low budget beat-'em-up moves.