If the word Qbert means anything to you then you'll have a good idea of what Pancho is all about. For Pancho, bar a few cosmetic alterations, is Qbert. This kind of thing used to be considered rather naughty, now even respectable old Commodore can get away with it. How times change.

As Qberts go, Pancho is a very good one, with one exception which I'll come to later. The screen, or board, is made up of square blocks in a sort of 3D bar graph arrangement. On either side of the block structure there is a 'magic carpet' - a kind of safe hiding place you can sit on when things get tricky. At the start of the game Pancho sits on one of these and a jumping bean and Mad Mexican Muncher occupy the other.

Controlling Pancho, you must hop diagonally from block to block painting from a different colour as you land. The jumping bean hops around repainting them so you must splat him if you don't want all your hard work undone. In the meantime you must also avoid the Mad Mexican Muncher who will splat you if you don't watch out. Occasionally a block with a chequered surface appears and landing on this will gain you an extra life in addition to the three you start with. These chequered jobs don't hang around for long, though, so you have to be quick. You also have four jokers, panic buttons which return you to the safety of a magic carpet when things get hairy.

If you manage to complete the first screen, the next requires two coats of paint, then three and so on. The Munchers also become more numerous which makes like extremely difficult.

Pancho is a hard game to fault. An arcade classic well imitated with excellent colour and graphics, and good sound. Just one grumble. Using a joystick it's very difficult to get Pancho to go where you want and when you want. This is infuriating because you lose out through no lack of skill on your part. The instructions on this point were wrong as well. I achieved better results with the keyboard once I got the hang of it.