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Although Frenesis describes itself as a game guaranteed to bring you near total nervous collapse, my guess is that if is more likely to be caused by boredom from monotonous gameplay.

You are armed with a Statron which is actually two thick bars, one running vertically down the screen, the other horizontally.

Each bar can be moved separately against a plain backdrop, the vertical one young left and right and the horizontal bar, up and down. The movement is controlled by an appropriate tug on the joystick.

Enter the aliens, stage left, right, and all ways. These particular meanies are not visually striking, being either circular, diamond or other sharp-angled shapes.

Your task is to destroy the horde before progressing to the next level.

The way to exterminate the infestation is by moving one of the bars across its path - the aliens explode on impact. If aliens are heading from the right, sweep the vertical bar from the left. Pink arrows on the bar point the direction the bar is currently facing.

You also have some smart bombs at your disposal, - triggered by pressing the fire button. They will rid you of all the aliens in the immediate vicinity.

And that's it really. There are 40 waves of aliens to get through and while it gets faster and more furious, you are still simply waggling one of two bars back and forth, I grant that dextrous handling of your Statron is needed to make progress but the game failed to catch my imagination. It's all too much of a muchness.

Frenesis was written by Tony Takoushi, well-known arcade games fan. Despite his wide experience of arcade action, I'm afraid he hasn't produced a stimulating game.

Frenesis doesn't come anywhere near generating the soft of excitement that many other games for the Atari have managed to deliver.

Better graphics, less simplicity and much more gameplay variety might have awakened my interest. As it is, although this game is cheap, you'd be advised to have a look at some others in the Mastertronic range. This is not one of their finer offerings.