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Having experienced the whip of wind through hair and the crash of rock against head first hand, I was somewhat dubious as to the nature of a rock climbing simulator. To start with, there is a distinct lack of physical effort involved, and a five thousand foot rockface doesn't fit on my 21" TV.

Before you can start the real heavy biz of scaling the summit of mount whatever-it-is, you first have to learn the rudiments of mountaineering. You are given control of a little person kitted out with every conceivable piece of equipment, and not subject to any weight restrictions. The first thing my little man told me - I decided to call him Greville in the end [? - Ed] - was that he was cold, so I rummaged through his back pack and made him wear the kind of items his mum would pack like anoraks and woolly knickers.

Walking was fairly easy - deft left-right movements are called for - until a whacking great chasm opened up taking Greville completely by surprise as it swallowed him. A scrolly message then appeared telling me that we should have checked the ground ahead of us, but seeing how it was training nothing serious had happened to Greville. Phew, what a relief.

After I'd mastered walking, I decided we needed a real challenge. So being a fearless adventurer-type I set Greville on the longest route to the top to be seriously simulated. A few more flip screens of walking, then Greville was placed precariously on a wall of ice. With a quick reference back to the instructions I pushed up on the joystick and Greville obliged by hammering his ice picks into the surface. Pulling down then caused him to bang his knee into the ice, and a quick tap on the fire button saw him haul himself up a few feet. After several million repetitions of this exercise. The ice petered out into rock and rather than the previous side-on view, the image changed to that from the rear.

Climbing the rock is achieved by moving the character's arms and legs into various embarrassing positions in order to obtain the best possible grip on the surface. With skillful use of the rope, soft shoes and chalk, Greville succeeded in getting absolutely nowhere. Now was the time to look for the cheat. I soon discovered, that if you move fast enough up the slope the computer doesn't have enough time to check the positions of all Grev's limbs and therefore doesn't have time to make him fall back down again. Subsequently it look another two minutes to complete the game.

At the summit, the screen changed to that of Greville holding an American flag with a broad grin on his face; this was in turn replaced by a newspaper headline and it was back to the start screen.

At this point I was not in any way tempted to go for another crack of the glacier by taking one of the five other paths; if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all.

A very poor offering on the whole, on a subject that right from the start would seem foolhardy to try to convert to a home micro. The gameplay is so thin that it requires a toupee! Graphically, it's weak. Blocky sprites (especially poor Greville, bless him!) do nothing for the game. There is though, a very soothing piece of title screen music - but even that tends to make you nod off. A fitting introduction, methinks...