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Frank Bruno's Boxing takes its inspiration from Super Puncher - the coin-op boxing game that was popular in the arcades and converted to the C64 last Summer. Now it's your turn.

In the game Frank takes on three different opponents with hilarious sounding names. There's the lumbering Canadian Crusher, Fling Long Chop the crafty Oriental, and the toughest opponent of all - the big, bald Russian - Andrapuncheredov.

Each opponent has his own unique style, Fling Long, for example has a tendency to think he's appearing in a copy of Way Of The Exploding Fist rather than a boxing game - levelling Kung-Fu kicks at you as he comes off the ropes.

He's also the quickest boxer Frank has to face - putting together several machine gun combinatioon punches that can leave the European champion reeling or worse still - out for the count.

The game is about the first I've come across that puts the suction pads on my joystick to good use.

You control Frank by using the stick and keys 1 and 2 - the stick to feint Frank right and left and the 1 and 2 keys to control his fists. It really does work well - I can't think why it's never been done before.

The Canadian Crusher is your first opponent - and no easy one either. He's got a hell of a punch on him. A real knockout merchant though not graphics here impress. Not quite up to the standard of some of the digitised portraits that are beginning to appear on some new C64 games but certainly better than anything else I've seen on the C16.

The size of the figures is also worth remarking on. They are nice and big so you can see what's going on - pretty essential to any beat-'em-up game.

The main part of the screen is the ringside view itself. A slightly disappointing aspect of the game is that only a fraction of the ring is used. Bruno and his opponents face each other square on only fainting to the right and left for the duration of the round.

Above the ring are several other game displays. The digital clock counting down the three minutes of each round. Each bout only lasts for one round.

Each boxer's current strength is displayed by a constantly changing barometer. When Frank successfully pummels his opponents their strength barometer will shrink to nothing allowing him to go in for the knockout punch.

Depending on his own strength at the time, his opponent may or may not stay down for the count of ten.

If not it's who scores most points, also recorded for you at the top of the screen, that is the winner.

When you get a sufficiently high victory over your opponent the computer will give you a secret code that you can use to load the next boxer. There are three separate loads in the game.

The game has been programmed to a high standard by Berks Trilogy programmer - Jon WIlliams. It's a lesson to all those C16 programmers out there who keep delivering poorly constructed platform games, but I can't help feeling it is a little repetitive.

It would have been improved if Elite had crammed a few more opponents in there for a bit of variety. The C64 version had six - it ought to have been possible to get a couple more loads at least on two sides of tape.

The sound was also less than spectacular. All you really get are the bleeps for the count and some rather muffled noises as the punches are thrown.

Still, if you ever got to play Super Puncher in the arcades and you liked it, then this is the nearest thing to it you are ever likely to find for your C16 and Plus/4.