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The current trendy thing for software publishers to do seems to be launching more labels than games. Firebird as the latest to follow the trend with another budget label, 299 Gold. This is the first Commodore release: will it live up to its gold title and be 24 carat or is it only plated?

The blobpods are on a school holiday on the planet Cubos (a wee place in the 27th dimension). The strange thing about the blobpods is they all have a dinosaur-like intelligence (i.e. they're all thicker than school custard).

So, as their teacher, trip organiser and acting minder off you set. Your job is primarily to make sure that these blobpod retards all return from their school holiday in one piece, which won't be easy!! The main problem is that the architect of the planet Cubos was obviously also a renowned divvy and built the whole landscape out of cubes. The blobpods must bounce across these cubes from left to right continuously, and your job is to stop any obstructing cubes or to stop them falling down any gaps in the landscape. Well, this is a tough job, but your record as a teacher wouldn't look too cool if you let eight kiddie-pods dies on a day out!!

The way in which you must save the lives of these brainless brats is by manipulating a cursor arrow in front of where these Blobpods are bouncing and pressing Fire over any cube to pick it up and move it out of the way (you can only hold four at a time).

Strategically moving the obstructing blocks in order to beat the time limit you are set isn't the greatest of your worries: harder by far is closing the gaps. In the earlier of the one hundred levels the gaps are fairly small but as you get on to the other later levels the gaps are positively huge. To close the gaps you must first pick up the amount of blocks needed (once again, maximum four), then press Fire over where you wish to put them down. As you can imagine, all this must be done in an awful rush so the blobpods don't reach the gap before you fill it. On later levels what you really must do is put a few cubes down first and try to fence the pupils in so you can release them when the roadwork has been done.

And, as if that wasn't enough to keep you busy, the cubes themselves are also against you. Some cubes will eat the blobpods if touched. Some can't be picked up. Some, once picked up, can't be put back down. Happily there are also a few that give you bonus points (Woo!!).

There are eight blobpods you must guide to safety. There's one particularly annoying one who doesn't get his ass in to gear until all the others have crossed, something which doesn't help you time limit one little bit. Your game is over once all the blobpods have died (and so, I imagine, is your teaching career). And there's a rather dull little bonus level every four sheets which gives you the chance to improve your score.

Hyper Blobs is OK, but then there are a lot of OK budget games, and most of them are a quid cheaper - better value for money than the new Hoddle & Waddle single, but not as much of a snip as a CU binder.