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"Only the strong survive" - it announces from the cover of Evolution. How true! You need the wrists of a gorilla, the constitution of an ox and the patience of Job to even consider playing Sydney Development Corporation's version of Evolution.

Starting as a lowly amoeba basking in protozoic slime, you have five theoretical lives to advance through an evolutionary cycle.

This cycle consists of six phases including amoeboid, tadpole, rodent, beaver, gorilla and human.

Negotiating the plethora of hazards and techniques in each phase passes you on to the next (assuming you have any lives left) until you manage to kill ten mutants during the human phase.

As long as you can do this (I couldn't!), then you "witness the end of the human race". The logic behind this statement totally bewilders me - you've won so why end the race?

I must admit I expected more to the packaging. All you get is the disk in an envelope proclaiming "Sydney", with a foldover sheet of cardboard giving instruction on the inside.

The instructions are brief but, thankfully, accurate and starting the game couldn't be easier.

Once up and running it's well worth the time just to let the program run through to acquaint yourself with the structure of each phase.

Three levels of skill are available: beginner, intermediate, and expert - classed at levels 1, 7 and 13.

Considering that 99 levels are programmed into the game I can't contemplate the impossibility factor of the higher levels as 13 was way beyond me.

All phases use the same keys or joystick controls. If keyboard is used, then Up and Down could have used a better layout than A and Z.

Poetic licence has been taken to extremes. Amoebae with a shield facility, tadpoles eating waterflies, and gorillas in Africa throwing coconuts.

If in any phase you lose your lives then the whole thing starts again from the first phase. Deft use of the pause function ("ESC") is a necessity.

Really, Evolution is just a series of six loosely-linked games, none of which is likely to maintain more than minimal interest. On the basis of this game, if Charles Darwin was around today he'd be preaching the Old Testament.