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Veterans of the 8-bit scene won't need any introduction to this game, but for the benefit of everyone else, they're going to get one anyway. Head Over Heels was for many people the ultimate game in the genre spawned by Ultimate's legendary Knight Lore, the 3D isometric arcade puzzle adventure. It featured two player characters, Head and - oh go on, take a guess.

The twin heroes had different characteristics and capabilities, and could be combined into one super-character to negotiate some of the game's trickier obstacles, although others would require Head and Heels to separate and take different routes. The ultimate objective was to retrieve five crowns from the evil Emperor Blacktooth, but that's enough plot.

What you need to know is that Head Over Heels is likely to give you some of the greatest game-playing pleasure you've ever had from your Amiga, and lots of it too. The game design is of a quality rarely - if ever - seen in a 16-bit arcade game, and the level of addiction is almost frightening. Head and Heels start the game in different locations, and getting them together is a sizeable challenge in itself. The reward for this is a character with superb powers of speed and manoeuvrability, but after a few screens your bubble of confidence is burst when you reach one which can only be passed by splitting the two comrades up again. This, of course, simply makes you all the more determined to re-unite them, and the cycle of challenge followed by reward followed by frustration is just one of the things which makes this game so utterly compulsive.

It's far from the only thing, though. The monstrous deviousness of some of the puzzles makes it all the more teeth-grinding when you lose a life (as you invariably do) on one of the embarrassingly simple ones immediately before or afterwards, and you'd be well advised to have something soft strategically placed beside your computer to save you from punching goodbye to your warranty.

The game maintains a balance between addiction and frustration, through, by the use of the Reincarnation Fish, a novel gameplay device which acts as a RAMsave. On touching one of the fish, your game position is stored, and when you run out of lives you can restart the game from the last fish you reached, without all that boring techie knobbing around with actual save functions. This little touch is just one example of how much care has been taken to keep you locked up in Head Over Heels' little universe, and away from nasty computer talk. You'll never see a 'Decrunching Level Two' message in this game, pal.

Still, this is supposed to be an objective review, not a meeting of the Head Over Heels Fan Club, so here's a list of the game's bad points: the graphics haven't changed visibly from the original 8-bit versions; there aren't any keyboard controls.

Pretty crap for bad points, weren't they? The graphics are undeniably primitive for the Amiga, but they're gorgeous and cute in their own right and, anyway, in the final analysis they're almost entirely irrelevant. As for the keyboard, it is a pity (this is a game which was always meant to be played with keys), but the joystick controls won't give you any problems after thirty seconds' practice.

I'm running out of space now, and I haven't even told you about the user-friendly front-end with adjustable sound and control sensitivity, or about how clever and funny the in-game obstacles and puzzles are, or about half of the things that make me love this game so much. If you didn't believe that they used to write better games in the old days (creak creak), play Head Over Heels and eat your words.

One of the best games in the world ever, and now it's on your Amiga for eight quid! Are you going to buy it, or am I simply going to have to kill you?