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There are some games that look and sound great, but after about five minutes playing you realise that that's all they've got going for them. Hypercircuit is one of these.

You control a yellow thingy, patrolling a printed circuit board (PCB). Your task is to defend your PCB from marauding molecules which try to create a fault in the circuit. Strip all this mumbo-jumbo away and you're left with a maze-type game, vaguely reminiscent of Black Thunder, but nowhere near as good.

The PCB is a grey background, the tracks are black, outlined in blue. Moving items are normal-size multi-coloured sprites and the various components of the circuit are lined in black, but limited in colour to pink or blue. The home bases (haven't seen them in the latest Maplin catalogue) contain spinning shapes.

The start's pretty standard. The pieces of your patroller come together from all quarters of the screen and it's into the fray.

Pressing fire releases a pellet which zaps off, bouncing down the tracks, blasting nasties.

And that's all there is to the game. The nasties come in various colours and shapes, but they're all the same size. Some (the easiest to handle) follow the tracks at various speeds, according to type. Others fly overhead, and there are mine layers, mains spikes and electro jets which can fire back at you.

When things get really hairy you can zap every track-bound nasty in the vicinity with a hypercharge blast.

The accompanying music is nicely done, fast and furious, matching the action. The scrolling and movement is also well-treated. But five minutes and you've seen it all.