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Atari's Paperboy first appeared in the arcades nearly seven years ago, and cast you as a paper deliverer whose round takes him to the very strangest parts of town. In this Megadrive conversion, all of the original coin-op's features have been included as you battle against the odds to get your papers delivered.

At the start of the game there are three streets to choose from, effectively giving three difficulty levels. Each level is split into seven sub-levels, each of which represents a day of the week. The object is simply to survive until Sunday.

At the beginning of each round you're shown a map of your delivery route. You must deliver papers to every subscriber, by throwing them either into their mailboxes or on their doormats as you cycle past.

Non-subscribers should be treated with the contempt they deserve, so throw spare papers through their windows and ride all over their nice flower beds for bonus points.

If you fail to deliver a paper to a subscriber, he cancels his subscription - a perfect round of deliveries, however, results in new customers!

Things are complicated by the presence of various obstacles such as lawn mowers, buggies, cassette players, and even ghosts! If you hit any of these, a life is lost - so careful with those handlebars.

At the start of each game the player gets the choice of three different routes: Easy, Medium or Hard Street. Obviously Easy Street is where beginners should practise their skills.

On Medium Street things start to get hard, but to compensate, scoring is doubled. Those chasing a really high score should tackle Hard Street, where triple score awaits.

At the end of each day, Paperboy gets the chance to show off his BMX-ing skills on the training ground. There are targets to throw papers at as well as jumps to negotiate. If Paperboy reaches the end of the course, he's awarded a big points bonus!

The original Atari coin-op appeared in early 1985 and wowed arcade goers with its combination of great graphics, sampled speech and unusual handlebar controls. However, it has a bug - right at the end of the bonus round, cycling between the grandstand and the fence sent the scoring system crazy and you'd end up with well over a billion points!

Paperboy's paper round rakes him through a typical 1985 neighbourhood. Deadly spinning breakdancers rotate to the crazy beat of their ghettoblasters, cars reverse into his path, roadworkers are hazards to avoid, as are mad cats, bonkers dogs, radio controlled vehicles and inebriated pedestrians!

The houses of non-customers should be treated with the contempt they deserve, so sling papers through their windows, ride across their lawns, squash their flower beds and do your utmost to cause as much damage as possible. Not only is this fun - you get bonus points too!

Arrrgghhhhh! Paperboy scores top marks in the frustration stakes owing to two incredibly irritating factors. First of all, the collision detection is exceptionally dodgy, resulting in lots of unforeseen and very unfair trips to the cemetery.

Seconds, the control method is just plain stupid. Control of the bike seems to pivot around the back wheel, making for very unresponsive and unrealistic gameplay. Other than those two factors, Paperboy remains quite faithful to the coin-op with backdrop graphics that mimic the coin-op adequately and loads of great sampled sounds.

Some of the sprites (like your bike) seem a bit ropey around the edges, but otherwise their conversion looks and sounds just like the real thing. This game is obviously a good buy for fans of the original, but I felt that ultimately it was just too annoying to make it much fun at all.

With its crisp graphics and great tunes, this conversion looks and sounds identical to the original coin-op classic. However, it falls down on its playability due to very poor bike handling and naff collision detection.

For a start, the response to the joypad is sluggish, but more importantly the game suffers from the same irritating and unrealistic "rear wheel steer" that plagued computer and Lynx versions of the game. Basically, the bike pivots from its rear tyre rather than turning using the front wheel like it did in the original arcade game, which makes precise control very difficult.

The programmers of the superb Master System version avoided this problem, so it's annoying to see it rear its ugly head here. The aforementioned collision detection is just plain frustrating - the bike often hits things you think you've avoided, and then sails unscathed through what looks like a fatal collision.

If these flaws had been removed, this would have been a perfect conversion. But they haven't, and the end result is a disappointing game which you get the feeling could easily have been so much better.

Presentation 82%
Great presentation throughout, with arcade-quality intermission screens and comprehensive difficulty settings.

Graphics 83%
Crisp and clear sprites and bright backgrounds make this look just like the original machine.

Sound 84%
Again, accurately reflects its arcade counterpart.

Playability 76%
Annoying controls and irritating collision detection makes this frustrating from the outset.

Lastability 65%
There are plenty of levels to conquer, but only those willing to persevere in the face of frustration will keep playing.

Overall 72%
A potentially superb coin-op conversion which is sadly let down by two very annoying gameplay flaws.