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You know when you get up in the middle of the night, go downstairs to the kitchen, and make yourself a huge snack (oops, I just typed 'snake' there, bit of a Freudian slip, I think!) with loads of cheese and pasta and chocolate and toast and stuff, then when you get up in the morning you find a load of oddly-coloured sticky mess all over the table and tomato ketchup in the sugar bowl and you can't remember for a minute how it all got there? Well, Rainbow Islands is a bit like that. [Er, what? - Ed]

You go for a quick game, you play away quite happily for ten minutes or so, and you get up only to find that it's 45 years later and you're married with three children. [Er... - Ed] It's a bit like being sent to jail for life after murdering someone, only more fun. [Nurse! - Ed] If you imagine life as being like a movie, Rainbow Islands is the bit in JFK where they show the Zapruder film of Kennedy's assassination over and over again, plus the bit in Misery where Kathy Bates smashes James Caan's ankles with a hammer, plus the bit in 1984 where Richard O'Brien rips out John Hurt's tooth with his bare hands, plus the bit in Robocop where Robocop looks straight into the camera and says "Stay out of trouble", plus the bit in Star Trek II where Spock dies tragically of radiation poisoning, plus the bit in The Shining where Jack Nicholson hacks through the door with the aze, plus the whole of An American Werewolf In London, plus the bit in Airplane where the tower says, "They're on instruments up there," all rolled into one. Finishing Rainbow Islands is like scoring the winning goal in a cup final, only more exclusive.

Rainbow Islands is the game keyboards were built for (only the truly sad play it with joysticks), and the only game that makes Super NES owners wish they had an Amiga. It's beyond criticism. It's the game that separates the true lover of video-game entertainment as a concept, and a part of a complete and fulfilling life, from the pathetic no-hope trainspotter loser too terminally screwed-up and repressed to enjoy anything with primary colours in it.

If you don't like this game, I hope you die horribly of something painful before your breathing pollutes the air of the planet for another single second. Your sort make me sick.

If this game was a tree, it'd be a 250-foot Canadian Giant Redwood. Which, if you haven't got it yet, is exactly what you deserve to be hit around the head with. Don't be an idiot all your life, go out and buy this now!