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Here's one for the jailbirds among you. In Domesday Blues you play the part of a prisoner waiting to be reprogrammed by a bunch of homicidal robots. Slung into a deep dark cell you must use all your faculties to escape and save the only girl left alive on Earth.

The game is an arcade adventure which starts by allowing you to allocate 100 points between strength, courage and fitness. The screen then displays the interior of your dismal cell. Using the joystick you get out of bed and explore. Moving around you may bump into the wall where the cartoon character sprite will say "ouch", or something similar in French.

Why French? Because the game, marketed in Britain by PSS, originally comes from France. In the cell, your character will find a hole in the wall, in which there is a franc.

The first real problem is how to get out of the cell. A few hearty kicks bust the door open and deplete your strength. So it is important to make sure you brought plenty of strength along with you. Through the door, you find yourself in a grey and dismal corridor (lots of atmosphere this game). There are more doors to cells in the corridor and doors to other areas. The other areas contain robots which may or may not attack you.

Some robots don't move, but their presence makes your fitness decrease rather rapidly. When you are totally unfit you die. [ACV would like to point out that this is just artistic licence and that totally unfit people should not be alarmed - Ed]

The current state of your health is displayed at the bottom of the screen and there are various things scattered around the complex which allow you to replenish these all important fitness and strength points. A drinks machine - which is why you need the franc - will provide you with more courage in the form of a cup of coffee. Drinking wine makes you fitter [also artistic licence - Ed] and eating builds up your strength.

During the game, the passing time is shown on screen as vertical scratch marks and it seems to be a good idea to have a little nap in a cell and wait for nightfall to explore certain parts of the complex.

Domesday Blues is a quite an interesting game. I guess the French connection is what gives it its air of originality. Initially it is quite fun to explore the prison, working out what should be done next.

However I soon got bored with re-entering the numbers for courage and so on after getting killed for the umpteenth time. The graphics aren't very impressive and the general feel of the game is not up to the same quality as, say, something like Batman.

The game does have some redeeming qualities and if sold at the right price can be good value for money. For me, the game is not really my cup of Pernod.

My view of the French has always been that they are a bunch of peasants who know as much about farming as I do about Siberian Yak cheese. Then they go and surprise us all by designing missiles to sink British aircraft carriers and beating the Americans at their favourite game, the great space race.

The final straw has come when they start producing games software that is actually better than most of the home-produced stuff.

Get Dexter could become a classic. Domesday Blues probably won't become such a smash but is certainly quite a fair game. I must at this point plead a little ignorance of the French language which is probably why it took me so long to work out what to do as I only had French instructions.

However as far as I can tell, you start off in your prison cell and the idea is to break out of gaol. The up section of the screen shows a rather strange 3D perspective view of the action while the lower part has various status information.

Overall a pretty fair attempt which will probably seem even better when someone in the office lets me see the translated instructions. But of the French stuff that's about to appear over here I'd suggest you wait and see Get Dexter.

By all accounts prison is a dull, lonely place. Domesday Blues conjures up the atmosphere perfectly. There seems to be a distinct lack of other prisoners but the vicious robots make up for the lack of guards.

The Mode 1 stipple is used to very good effect. If you have seen Spectrum I Of The Mask you will know how shading can add depth to a shape. L'Amstrad is number one in France and so most of the good software is originated on the Arnold. I suppose it is then converted to MSX and the native Thompson computers. Programs which start life on the Amstrad always seem that much better than conversions. All in all, a good try.