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Everyone's favourite 8-bit farmer is back in his latest (and last) single-screen affair, completing Bob Smith's trilogy of games quite handsomely. The story begins with Farmer Jon's visit to Jack's 'holiday farm' in England's White Rose county. Whilst out in his combine harvester, Jack digs up some strange coins, which had unfortunately damaged the blades of the farm equipment.

Recognising the coin as Roman, and probably worth a bit, Jon warns Jack to keep things quiet, or he'll have all kinds of wannabe archaeologists, or even - heavens forbid - Tony Robinson complete with camera crews and the likes, visiting to take his loot and causing him all kinds of problems. Jon naturally advised the coins should be put in a museum, but word has got out about the hoard, so Jack must quickly collect what he can before it's too late.

This game plays like an evil Pac-Man. Jack's Tractor will happily collect the coins that are strewn around his fields, and the roaming archaeologists will take one of his lives on contact, though they will also pick up the treasure should they come across any. This act will slow them down, which is quite handy, but will deduct points from your score. Jack's only defence is to erect temporary gates, of which he has five in total, and which will block the roaming hoarders path whilst allowing Jack's tractor safe passage through. These wear out quite quickly, and can be replaced elsewhere once gone, though because of the nature of the levels, and the rate at which those pesky trespassers are released into the game, it is quite difficult to trap them long enough to collect every coin from each level.

As each maze is repeated straight after it is completed, the second time around the maundering numismatics start their task that bit quicker. Once all of the roamers are out in the play field, a bonus artifact is revealed for you to collect.

One thing that fans of the series will notice is that the title and in-game tunes are the same as last time, and indeed the time before that. Not that the music has become any less apt, or any more of an ear-sore since the inaugural release. It's still the same mix of beautifully composed, bright and perfectly suitable 8-bit musical scores by Lee du-Caine.

Simple sound effects are included when loaded on a 48K Speccy. And the game engine has only changed slightly, as well as graphics being recycled. None of this makes for a poor spin-off. Indeed, it's all goon fun, and I like that the roamers within actually take points off you by collecting the coins.

Farmer Jack Treasure Trove is probably the easiest game in the series, and is thankfully on par with the other two games. I still think the first game is the best, but it is a close call with all three titles. However, with the standard rising with recent releases such as splATTR and GameX: The Games Exchange (both of which I would have rated 10 out of 10, if I'd been allowed to), this game gets a respectable seven. And, it's available as a free download from Bob's site mentioned in the details above.

Product: Farmer Jack Treasure Trove
Developer: Bob Smith (www.bobs-stuff.co.uk)
Publisher: Cronosoft (www.cronosoft.co.uk)
Machine: 48/128k Sinclair ZX Spectrum

A rather cruel twist on the original Pac-Man game that's great 2D fun!

I've had an email come through, which reads:

On the Recommendation of the latest Retro Mart, I have downloaded RallyBug for the Sinclair Spectrum. I have not been able to find any Speccy Emulators for Vista. Can you please help me?

Love the mag, Avery Penn

Well Avery, you've mentioned the V word. Honestly, if you want to use emulators, the best operating system to use is either Windows 2000 or XP. However, if you insist on Windows Viagra, then the only Speccy emulator I've found that works is Real Spectrum. This isn't very user friendly, I'm afraid. But at least it works: You can get it from www.ramsoft.bbk.org/realspec.html. Unfortunately, there isn't space to do a full tutorial to setting it up. Good luck!