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Describing this game isn't going to take long. Anyone over the trigger age of 22 will spot what's going on immediately; those of fewer years might need a bit of jollying along before twigging. Let's go.

There are three main components, a bat, a ball and a few bricks. The bat moves up and down one edge of the screen. The other three edges of the screen are walled in. The ball bounces around off walls, bricks and your bat. The bricks start off life in a group, only to vanish when hit by the ball.

If the ball passes your bat, it's lost. There is a strictly limited supply of these spheres, and when they are all gone the game finishes. There's a score of course, which goes up as bricks get hit. When a complete screenful of bricks gets cleared away, a new screen with a different pattern starts.

"Hold bard", cry the over 22ers. "That's a game called Breakout." Right, of course. Breakout the video game was designed in 1974/75 by a guy called Wozniak for a company called Atari (he got 8700 for it, by the way). Here we are, some 12 years later and there have been a lot of pixels under the bridge. One might reasonably expect a bit more out of a colour, 64k, hi-res computer than the original monochromatic collection of 44 microchips.

Indeed there is. A healthy selection of gimmicks tempts the palette of a jaded intergalactic warlord with an urge to pulverise a few non-sentient entities. Take the Bonus Brick. Not only does this cause extra points to accrue when hit, but it flips over to reveal a special effect. A subsequent hit on this effect causes magic to be worked on the system. Some cause the bat to enlarge alarmingly, some double subsequent scores, some make the ball stick to your bat until you choose to release it. All of them can be used to your advantage.

And what game of the late 80s would be complete without an alien or two (who said Gauntlet)? The extra-terrestrials in Krakout are all a bit odd, and all have an effect of some sort on you and your balls. Great title for a magazine, that.

The most common peripatetic paranormal is the floating ogre. This just disintegrates when hit, but can impart an interesting vector to your missile in so doing. Other odd bods include a bee that paralyses your bat, a diamond that clones your ball, and pulsating crosses that squirt you through the nth dimension to a higher screen.

There are 100 screens in all, and if you work your way through that lot there's a construction kit available that gives you another century to play with. There's a degree of customisation available from the standard game too; an options screen allows you to select various types of bat control, the speed of the hall and direction of play.

But, all said and done, it's still Breakout at heart. And there's nowt wrong with that.

Had to happen, I suppose. The name sets the tone precisely, unsubtly derived from the Californian word Breakout (vb: to spend dimes at the rate of a dollar an hour on a ridiculously over-addictive game).

Luckily, Gremlin has also been heavily influenced (also Californian; musicians' term for spotting easily rip-affable ideas) by the good bits of the game and has left them well alone. The end product is the best game of this month's bunch, simple to play and impossible to stop. Love it.

Imagine cannot really complain about Gremlin using the Arkanoid idea when that in itself is really borrowed from Breakout. The sideways view just makes it look as though it feels guilty. Arkanoid was too fast, Krakout is a shade too slow, but still very playable. I liked the bricks which explode, taking the surrounding ones with them.

The screen designs are good, but there is not really that much to programming another Breakout. I can't believe that Mastertronic doesn't have one waiting in the wings.

For some odd reason, nothing provokes me more to a burst of maniacal laughter than striking a particularly good angle in Krakout and watching the ball demolish a good part of a screen with no further action on my part. And the fact that, after a good week of batting around, I've still only got to the twelfth screen only exacerbates my condition.

As usual, Gremlin has various surprises hidden away, making upward progress an interesting affair indeed. How about the double hat that is as likely to propel the ball backwards to oblivion as forwards to a high score? It's all a certain cure for sanity.