The One was one of the few magazines that didn't give Diggers a really top mark when it emerged as the first ever CD32 product. David Upchurch, in his infinite wisdom, saw fit to award it something in the low 70, and though I think it's fair to say a lot of our competitor magazines were probably being a bit over-enthusiastic, I personally thought the game had a lot of charm.

It's certainly not a game that's going to grab everybody, and though I enjoyed the opportunity to re-review the A1200 version in 'Updates' some months later, it's true to say that, while I enjoyed myself, people passing by or stopping to watch weren't exactly enthralled.

My girlfriend spent a lot of time over the Xmas hols watching me trundle through to completing some 67 percent of the game (lucky little saucepan!) but to this day she marvels at my apparent patience with a game that seem to be doing so little. Ah, but that's the beauty of the game. I think.

It's hard to explain why anyone would want to sit for hours on end watching tiny sprites digging their way through screen after screen of rock, but there is satisfaction to be found given time, and now that what is essentially Diggers 2, has arrived in the form of Extractors, it's time once again to dust off ye olde spades and prepare to dig. But some things have changed...

The story has moved on some years from Diggers, and the game now revolves around 25 floating land masses that have been rather selfishly risen by a race called the Flinarjians. Now the only way to get to the Flinarjian city is via all of these lands, financing your journey as you go and destroying the generators that power the city's shield.

So, whereas Diggers relied on endless digging, Extractors is more about exploration. To move from one land to the next, three tasks must be completed: find and destroy the aforementioned generator, collect a set value in gems, and find enough fuel amongst the gems to power your ship to the next land. Hmm, more Deja vu vicar?

Rather sadly, Extractors doesn't quite achieve what it sets out to do. Being a fan of Diggers, it's easy to see how Millennium has approached this product (i.e. trying to counter the complaints made against Diggers) but if anything, they've gone too far in the other direction.

Diggers presented you with vast tracts of earth to be mined which featured the odd gem, while Extractors has small areas to mine, absolutely packed with gems and fuel. Somehow this isn't as rewarding, 'cos you end up with screens full of gems, and a gang of happy workers teleporting back and forth cashing in. The control method can be a bit clumsy, and it's very easy to lose your patience with some of the characters who will insist on wandering into huge pools of lava and dying.

Though the status bar shows you when folks are twiddling their fingers, if you're in the middle of some complicated manoeuvre with characters on flying platforms etc. you really don't have time to cycle through your blokes and tell them to wait (which should be the default as far as I'm concerned anyway).

While on this subject, I realise that the author has tried to inject some personality into the characters, but why couldn't he have just made them sit quietly and wait? It would have scored so much less on my 'annoy-o-meter'. The presentation is okay, although it would have been nice to have had a few more new graphics rather than so many Diggers relics, and the overall 'feel' of the game is pleasing enough.

The inclusion of new toys helps to keep the boredom at bay, but after a few experiments, you rarely come back to them. So, overall, Extractors is a disappointment for me. There are not enough new ideas, or enough challenges. The only thing that stops you from finishing with each land-mass without any problems at all is the stupidity of your men, and after a while, you won't bother with more than two characters because it's such a pain looking after the prats!