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The time has long gone when the release of a coin-op conversion was a certain cue for whooping and hollering. The news of your favourite machine being licensed out is now more likely to bring you out in a cold sweat. The recent batch of mediocre arcade conversions from the major software houses (Express Raider, Enduro Racer, Jailbreak, Shao-Lins' Road, Elevator Action) may well rebound on them before long. For now, we'll treat them like any other game, so hold on to your cash until we tell you.

Metrocross is, happily, a success and it succeeds because it sets its sights on a target it can hit. Although the arcade game is good it relies on its addictiveness for its appeal rather than fantastic sound and graphics. As a conversion Metrocross is a straightforward job, and I'm relieved to say the people who did it, Probe, have managed the job.

The gameplay is simple, a cross between hopscotch and an assault course. You guide a character down a sort of hi-tech alley with a floor chequered with light blue, navy blue and green squares. You have to make it from one end of the course (in fact, you are supposed to be escaping from the City of Metro) to the other within the allotted time. To hinder you there are potholes, grills which fry you, rolling Coke cans, hurdles and large patches where the floor is covered with green squares which slow you down to a crawl.

In your favour there are objects that will help you avoid the obstacles. Springboards litter the route which enable you to launch your man and send him spiralling over a large distance, but what you really need is the skateboards which also line the route. Jumping on these allows you to avoid the hurdles and zoom over the green squares, weaving in and out of the other obstacles that appear. Then just as you think you've made it, you get flattened by a runaway coke can... And that's the appeal of the game, just when you think you've got it sussed you make a mistake under pressure and blow it. Running out of time sees your character frazzled on the spot.

Probe's version, as I've said it, adequate. The game scrolls well and plays without trouble and all twenty-four levels are in there. One moan I do have is the amount of time it takes for you to get started after completing each level, which is excruciatingly slow - almost as painful as listening to the music which accompanies the game.

Metrocross is an adequate conversion of an unspectacular arcade game, but we should all be thankful that it has retained its playability. That should be enough to see it do well.