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In this game, if you are using the one player option, you control Mario - a little carpenter dressed in blue. The aim is to catch the pests in his house, including Shellcreepers and Fighterflies.

If the two player option is chosen, Luigi, Mario's brother, also tries to catch the animals. Mario and Luigi can either play against or with each other. They have separate point indicators, so you can see who is the best pest - catcher even if they are trying to kill the animals together.

The way to kill the pests is to make Mario or Luigi jump up, by pressing fire, so that they hit their heads against the next floor up. If a pest is directly above their heads, it is knocked unconscious, but, after a while the Shellcreeper, for example, stands up, then lies on his back with his legs in the air and then he comes to life again.

To avoid the pests returning to life, the little men have to walk over them after they have been knocked out and before they recover. This makes the pest fall to the bottom of the screen, thus being killed.

If Mario or Luigi walk into the live animals, the men are killed. Mario and Luigi can walk off one side of the screen and onto the other. This is useful as there are also objects that chase the men, and these can kill them. Bonuses are awarded for collecting coins and wafers. A wafer appears each time a pestis killed and if you catch it, 800 points are awarded. When coins appear all the pests disappear and you are given fifteen seconds to collect as many coins as possible. A timer can be seen that counts down the seconds.

In later rounds, Slipice appears, covering the floors with a treacherous layer of ice. You can stop him from freezing the ground by hitting him from below and he can be knocked off a floor when he starts to melt.

The game begins with three or five turns and an extra turn is awarded with every 20,000 points scored. When all the pests are killed a new round begins. There are eight different games, starting with the round with Shell-creepers. These are the easiest pests to kill. Side steppers have to be hit twice and Fighterflies hop up and down, making them harder to kill.

Located between the two bottom floors there is a 'pow' switch. This is used to flip over all the pests on the screen, but it can only be used three times and does not reappear until you reach a new round. There are noises all the way through the action, including when the men walk, when they bash their heads, and when the rats fall down.

This is an average arcade game - the graphics are not too bad, although the pests are difficult to see clearly, probably because they are too small to be precise.

This is a game where timing is important - once this is mastered it's fairly easy to play. There are many better games on the market, and cheaper ones too. I would not go out of my way to buy it.