This month appears to be the month of the M*n*c M*n*r clone with no less than four versions arriving on my doorstep? These are the first two, from a company of whom I have never heard!

Sadly, this situation has now changed and Starship Software have fallen under the axe of the ruthless reviewer (those who are physically revolted by the sight of freshly drawn silicon should stop reading this review here).

This game does not adhere closely enough to the original formula to allow me to avoid describing it. The idea is to control Harry the Head banger as he attempts to collect all the diamonds on the screen. He must climb ladders and jump holes, but the main challenge comes from the clock - time runs out very quickly.

In Diamond Dash 2 the game becomes more complex with the inclusion of springboards and spikers, but doesn't become any more fun.

There is an option to design your own screens, editing the ones that exist already - this is a very highly commendable feature of the game, the best part of it in fact as these screens can be saved to and loaded from tape.

Considering the time spent on this section, it is very sad that the game plays so awfully, Harry the Headbanger looks like he has some sort of muscular disease. He jerks from location to location with almost unbelievable crudity. The climbing of ladders is exactly the same as the jumping of platform layers and the game is not smooth enough to allow the jumping to have a great deal of skill in it.

This game would probably have been acceptable before Manic Miner, Screaming Abdabs or Caverns Of Chaos (reviewed elsewhere) but now must come a poor second.

It reminds me very much of Dickie's Den without the monsters, especially in the way it plays. I'm afraid it must receive almost the same overall rating.

However, I can see it having some appeal when people start to design their own screens for their friends.

My advice for Starship? Rewrite the game play routines to make them a lot smoother; forget scrolling on the screen - it takes far too long and is even more irritating than games that play too long a burst of music before every life; allow the man to jump further; add an option to use the keyboard - these are not games that need joystick control, however easy it may be to do in machine code. With these alterations and the same screen designs you will have a very playable game.

The clones are becoming a very interesting field of study as each seems to surpass the former in merit or crass ineptitude.