Just what the game player ought to like: an obvious game with no complicated rules to learn and which gets down to business as soon as it is loaded.

Pinball Wizard comes in a mini-video type box, with a remarkably restrained black-and-white sleeve when you consider the simple but colourful screen graphics which capture perfectly the effect of playing any arcade pin table, including the tantalising way the ball seems to hang in space as it comes off the release plunger.

Anyone who's been within earshot of a penny arcade will know how to play this - though the terrifying thought strikes me that invader clones have driven the beloved pintables out of the collective consciousness.

Well then, you launch a ball round a table - which ought to be oblong-shaped but here it's sort of square (to fit on the screen) - and you have to keep it in play as long as possible using the flippers and (illegally but universally) leaning on one side or other of the table to persuade the ball to roll the way you want. This is called nudging. (Not strictly lawful, as I said, but considered to be part of the accepted technique.)

Each time the ball hits a bumper you get 100 points, each time it goes through a little tunnel (the rollover) you get 10, and there's a jackpot of 1000 points.

Function keys are used to select a one or two person game, to pull back the plunger and fire the ball.

The Commodore key operates the flippers and there's even a nudge function, operated by the space bar - but you've got to use it carefully or you'll get the dreaded "Tilt" display.

Either you're a pinball wizard or you're not. This is not a game to have universal appeal.

If, like me, you're an addict, this game is the next best thing to standing in one of those caverns under the Brighton Esplanade, your scooter parked outside and your anorak tied by its sleeves around your waist, as you try to beat the last player's best score.

The sound effects are simple but effective. However, no one has managed to get Vic's sound generator to simulate the clanging sound of the ball hitting the bumper.