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The more discerning viewers among you will already be familiar with Round The Bend, a TV series best described as a cross between Spitting Image and Viz. The anarchic toilet humour makes for one of the less patronising kids' TV shows of recent years, and the sewer-bound antics have lots of potential for a computer game.

Which is a pretty stunning coincidence, because that's exactly what we've got here.

The storyline has Doc Croc, reptilian editor of the comic on which the show is based , accidentally blowing up the comic's new video printing press. Artist Lou Brush has to travel around the sewers collecting the bits of the machine while the other characters put together their various pages by first finding the pages (also by leaping around in the sewers) and then playing different sub-games in order to locate each page's punchline.

Obstacles in their paths include various items of litter and sewer-dwelling creatures which, if touched, send the characters back to Doc Croc's office to try again, and the time limit which continually counts down and can only be extended by successful completion of a page. Much the same way, in fact, in which an average issue of CF is put together [Er, I'm afraid he's right - Ed].

Most of Round The Bend is played out in a horizontally-scrolling platform game style, not at all dissimilar to last month's Rolling Ronny. The characters (you play all of them, one at a time in any order you like) run and jump along, avoiding various baddies until they come to one of their own comic pages (or in Lou's case, a piece of the printing press), whereupon they play one of nine simple sub-games, all more or less the same except for the nature of the enemies (ranging from spiders to skateboarding vegetables).

The objective is simple, just get to the end of the page without colliding with any nasties, and reach the boxing glove which signifies the page's punchline (ahem!)

Doing this sends the page to the printers and resets the timer. Each of the three 'writer' characters has three pages to complete, and careful planning of when to use them is required to ensure the optimum amount of time is allowed for Lou to collect all the bits of printing press.

That's all there is to the game, but the cheerful graphics and easy control make it pretty good fun to play for as long as the tricky and challenging action stands between you and your goal. The major problem is that this isn't likely to be a very long time because, once you've worked out which character needs to do which pages and learned all the movement patters of the enemies, completing the game is a straightforward task.

It's a shame, because the game is basically an enjoyable one, but there isn't really enough of it to justify the price. There's definitely something budgetish about this one. That said, it'll interest viewers of the fabby TV show and anyway, it's still a lot better than Rolling Ronny...

1. Uninspiring sound effects.
2. Lots of trial-and-error in the first stages of the game.
3. Learn the patterns and you'll win the whole thing...
4. ...so you won't bother coming back for more.
5. For a full-pricer, it's very limited.

1. Fast moving and smooth.
2. No hanging about for blimmin' annoying multi-load.
3. Lovely cartoon graphics inspired by the daft plot.
4. Tough enough to be addictive in the short term.
5. Very playable and more-ish.
6. Straightforward and old-fashioned fun.
7. Comes straight from an unusually fab kids' TV show.