Where would you find a super-powered geriatric, a mutant mollusc, a customised chelonian, a holidaying pachyderm and an acrobatic ovum? Either a late night Channel Four science programme or the new compilation from CodeMasters. Believe us, the compilation is a lot more fun.

There must be some connection, some linking theme, some common element in the five games on Super All-Stars that'll provide some inspiration for a brilliantly witty introduction... but I can't work it out. I mean - a slug, an aging superhero, an egg, an elephant and a tortoise? Not even Ben Elton could could salvage a decent gag from that lot. So, let's forget the intro and just get straight on with the reviewing the games...

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Here it is. The game that tried and failed to turn slugs into international sex symbols. What next? A skateboarding stick insect? a super-powered amoeba?

Steg might not be the most endearing hero ever to have slithered across a computer screen, but the game isn't all that bad. In fact, it's pretty darned good. It's a frenetic, frantic, puzzley-type thing in which you have to work out how to transport some constantly crawling maggots from the bottom of the screen to your nest at the top of the screen to your starving kids. You do this by making Steg blow bubbles (as you can probably tell, David Attenborough wasn't the scientific advisor on the game).

Basically, you trap the maggots in the bubbles, which then float up towards the nest. But the path is not clear. There are all manner of platforms, spikes, wind blowing devices and other problems to make the going treacherous, and the bubbles burst at the least provocation. You control Steg who, apart from bubble blowing, can slither up and down walls and along ceilings as well as along the ground. He can also puff his cheeks to blow the bubbles about.

There are copious levels and on each you have a certain number of sluggy offspring to feed. You die if you run out of puff. Eating fruit replenishes your puff power and there are a number of power-ups, such as bionic legs and a jet pack, to speed things up.

The idea is a little over-complicated, and you need to employ a lot of experimentation, but the effort is paid off with some quite addictive gameplay. It's only let down by some uninspired graphics and the fact that as each level is larger than a screen, a lot of relevant action, i.e. the maggots reaching the slug nest, takes place out of sight.

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Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's more likely to be zimmerframe actually, because here comes Captain Dynamo, almost as fast as a speeding snail and leaping tall blades of grass with the help of a stepladder. The world's oldest superhero has arrived, and he's got to stop his archenemy, the octogenarian Austen Flyswater, flying off to the moon with a massive collection of diamonds that he's just swiped.

The action takes place on a series of platforms at the top of which is Flyswatter's escape rocket. You have to guide Captain Dynamo up the platforms, and this is no easy task. There are all manner of nasty traps and deadly, spinning, whizzy things in the way as well as moving hooks that the Cap has to cling on to, conveyor belts and all the other usual malarkey you find in platform games. There are a couple of more unusual obstacles, including some strange, disk things that make you bounce uncontrollably all over the place. The Cap also has to collect the diamonds that Flyswatter has dropped all over the place - he must be getting clumsy in his old age. So accuracy and split-second jumping is the order of the day.

Captain Dynamo is the newest game in the collection; in fact, it hasn't even come out on its own yet. This could be seen as a bit of a coup. But it isn't, simply because the game isn't actually very good. It has its moments; the main sprite is pretty funky, it scrolls smoothly and some of the obstacles are pretty ingenious. But there's one major problem; it's too darned difficult!

And the effort you put in isn't rewarded; you just get irritated and bored by it in a very short time. For example, the second obstacle you come to is just ridiculously hard; you bounce around for ages between loads of disks and nothing you do seems to have any effect on proceedings. You just have to waggle and wait for something to happen. Yawn.

There has also been little attempt to incorporate the concept of an aged hero into the game. There is plenty of scope for a few affectionate jibes at wrinklies; wheelchairs, hearing aids, queuing at the Post Office on Tuesdays, listening to Radio 2 - all conspicuous by their absence.

Couple this with some pretty basic graphics and you've got what can best be described as a poorly specimen that deserves an early retirement.

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Is there an egg joke left that hasn't been used in a Dizzy review? [No, James has used them all up - Ed] You've been spared then.

But you haven't been spared yet another Dizzy game. Yet again, the map has been changed (slightly) the story has been altered (just a tad) and puzzles have been rearranged (almost imperceptibly). Yes, it's the same old (admittedly successful) Dizzy formula and they still haven't worked out a better way of getting him to jump!

This time the plot concerns some evil wizard who's tried to put the series out of its misery by kidnapping all the eggy one's friends and trapping them using various spells. Dizzy has to rescue them.

It's the usual adventure/platform mix with the boggiest of bog-standard graphics. There's nothing basically wrong with the gameplay apart from the fact that it's so uninspired and uninspiring. There are so many better examples of this genre around, it's a wonder Dizzy is still so popular!

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Now this is more like it. A good, straightforward platform done with so much energy and style that it overcomes its one major flaw; it doesn't have a single original idea to its credit. But unlike Dizzy, which just seems like a tired formula, Turbo takes all the cliches and injects them with new life and vigour; it's a bit like the way the Indiana Jones films turbo-charged old Saturday morning cinema serials.

Turbo is a time-travelling, super-powered tortoise who has to collect six ancient artefacts from different time periods. Each level is a different era - Stone Age, Ice Age, Ancient Egypt, Medieval, some foresty-type affair (which might be Robin Hood-inspired) and Space Age - and there is an artefact per level. The aim is to leap around the platforms, killing or avoiding baddies, beat the end-of-level guardian and collect the artefact. There are bonuses, extra lives, power-ups, concealed bonus levels, moving blocks, invisible blocks, the whole works.

Sure, it's not the most challenging of games either mentally or reflex-wise, but it provides a healthy dose of good old-fashioned breathless action.

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CJ is an elephant with no super powers, but a pretty remarkable umbrella. It doesn't turn itself inside out at the slightest hint of a gust and when CJ falls off platforms it opens up and slows his fall, so that he doesn't end up in the elephants' graveyard.

CJ's family has been kidnapped by big white hunters and taken to America where they have been sent to different states. So CJ packs his... [Don't you dare - Ed] So CJ travels to the USA to search for his relatives before their tusks are turned into chess sets, their foot into umbrella stands and their hides into easy-wipe tablecloths.

This is a platformer with some impressively huge levels. The sprites are well drawn and animated, and the backgrounds are dead smart. CJ's armed with deadly peanuts that he shoots from his trunk, and can also collect bombs.

The game does suffer from some appalling xenophobia - CJ has to kill American cops, American footballers and the like for no better reason than that they're American icons; it's like killing all Swedes just because they inflicted Roxette on the world.

But this quibble aside, CJ In The USA is a great little game. Again, no rewards for originality, but it plays excellently and looks great!

Three out of five ain't bad, and the. good 'uns more than make up for the lamers (and some people even like Dizzy).