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Tobor comes in slick, well-designed packaging which seems to promise a new high in Spectrum thrills, arcade action par excellence. As for what you get when you load it up... well, that's another story.

On a mission to discover new life (Sounds a bit familiar?) you develop trouble with your propulsion and navigation systems. You land on the planet Kalanium to look for grittian stones to repair your ship.

But (surprise!) the planet just happens to be ruled by a race of vicious robots whose only aim in life is to destroy invaders.

But watch out: the robots will disintegrate - well, that's what the instructions say - if they collide, but green robots are indestructible.

Oh, what a lovely bore. After a very promising title screen with some tasty-looking graphics built up during loading, the game opens with a very basic maze indeed. Then a door at the top left corner of the screen opens to admit the little man you control. He strolls - very, very slowly - to the bottom right corner of the screen, where he simply stands and waits for a pack of five robots to move into position.

The whole process takes a good twenty seconds, during which all you can do is sit and watch.

When at last you are set free of your time warp, you can start to move, once again pretty slowly, and shoot at the robots.

The robots can also bowl balls at you - again, these don't exactly move at the speed of light, and they disappear if they hit the edge of the screen. But you can come a cropper if you take a potshot at a robot which has just turned green.

If you manage to get yourself killed, you'll get a jolly little tombstone, and the tune you can probably guess. If, on the other hand, you zap all the robots, you get a snatch of Land of Hope and Glory, and a new maze. This time, the robots and you move just a shade faster.

Give me Pacman any day of the week. Tobor is just too predictable for my tastes - the robots don't even take up random positions in the maze, but trundle to the same spot every time.

Wiping them out is so easy, at the lower levels it's guaranteed to give you a guilt complex. You'll never be able to open a can of beans with an easy conscience again...