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If you were born yesterday, or if this is the first time you've bought CU, then you obviously haven't heard of a software company called Ultimate. This particular company designed a few games that were played in three dimension and you didn't have to use those funny glasses. The 3D look is presented by viewing the playing field from a raised position from one of the diagonals of the rooms that you are currently in.

The amazing thing about the games from Ultimate was that you could see your character going in and out of the surrounding objects. Unfortunately, Molecule Man hasn't got any fancy under and overlap routines, but it still has a reasonable 3D effect.

Apart from the 3D graphics the most shocking news is that Molecule Man comes with 256 rooms and as each room is a 7 x 7 grid, that means there are 12,544 squares in total. In other words, if you wanted to map it you'll need a 112 x 112 grid of squares and about six months to spare - anybody who maps it deserves a gold Blue Peter badge.

You control the Molecule Man with only one aim and that aim is to survive. Trapped in a maze of overturned stools, cabbages, gold bars, Rubik's cubes, cheese wedges, mushrooms, bollards, playing cards, gyroscopes, bombs, bill vending machines and coins. So what do you do? Grab some grub and have a picnic with an enegue (I game it that name, I hope the author doesn't mind), it's a sort of monster that continuously pulls funny faces.

Actually, you're meant to charge around collecting any coins you find on the floor and buying life-saving pills, to stop your characters from kicking the bucket, from vending machines. After you've built up your life length you must buy a bomb from a vending machine with a bomb in it, with this you can blast away bits of the maze so that you can get a gyroscope - you're to collect sixteen of these gyroscopes to activate a teleporter that presumably saves you.

But there is a catch, Catch 22 you might say, if you do buy a bomb and get a gyroscope, the chances of you finding another coin and pill vending machine soon enough are very slim.

I must warn any potential buyers that though the instructions state that Molecule Man can be played with joystick, I've found that it can't be, so don't come crying to us. It's not that I mind using the keyboard but Mastertronic can be guaranteed to have plenty of abuse bellowed down the phone from angry buyers.

The graphics are very well done and your character, a bubble on legs, is well animated. The colouring is enough to make a Spectrum owner get excited about, but C16 and Plus/4 users are used to multi-coloured graphics, so they'll just have to do for now.

All this cramming as much into the game as possible has left the sound pretty low. If there's one thing I hate it's when programmers treat the machine as if it's got no sound chip.

Despite all of these problems I love this game, I'll even finish it one day. If you like arcade adventures, don't give it a miss because of the keyboard controls. Give your joystick a rest and I think you'll find that for only two smakaroonies this is definitely a bargain and a half.