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Open wide please. Our teeth are under constant attack from the indestructible, invincible oral bacteria Dentium Kamikazium - or DK to you and me. And it's a battle that can't be won. Don't feel too down in the mouth though, because constant brushing with toothpaste can considerably lessen the decaying effect, and prolong your tooth-life.

Armed with three brushes and Imagico toothpaste, you scrub clean as many of the two rows of teeth as you can. In this way the damage of the DKs to each tooth is undone. The eventual irreparable and unsightly cavity is starved off for a while. It's a pretty unequal contest, especially as every fourth cavity is penalised with the loss of a brush. What's more, the dreadful DK blobs positively thrive on various sweets that melt in the mouth from time to time.

The game opens with not exactly a pearly gape as the teeth start off uniformly yellow, represented top left as a decay level of 1600. The purple DK blobs have already begun their work on random teeth. This turns them first a shade of pale blue, then navy and lastly leaves a large hole and the decay level shoots up.

It is lowered on scrubbing a tooth white. Your brush appears above the tongue, the toothpaste tube below. You load up with a green squirt from the tube which appears only when you've run out again. To get your automatic delivery you must position the brush correctly. I found it difficult at first - and occasionally thereafter - as the required position is critical. Next, simple apply the brush to the tooth that most urgently needs treatment and scrub the decay away.

Once or twice the brush annoyingly refused to make tooth contact. And a squirt doesn't go far at all. But you can soon judge how many teeth can be rescued before needing new paste and it is all too easy to develop a ring of confidence about it.

With the upping of the bacteria level, the game gets faster and more crowded with blobs. Luckily the brush moves speedily to where you want it. The bacteria level is shown on the right, with the highest level yet achieved displayed permanently across the bottom of the screen after the first game.

This holey war ends with a dirge, and no tombstones!

Molar Maul is, initially, absorbing. But it's too easy to make progress up through the bacteria levels, while the action becomes repetitive. And that's the tooth of the matter.