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I was first introduced to the official Rally X on one of those Namco Plug-'N-Play devices that were popular twenty years ago. Trickysoft's new version for the BBC B is, well, 'different'. It's not the Rally X I remember, in that its sprites are way smaller and you can see a lot more of the playing area. But it's every bit as playable as the arcade classic. In case you don't remember, Rally X is the overhead maze game where you control a car and collect up the flags in a maze. You must confuse the pursuing cars by deploying smoke bombs from your exhaust. If they run into your smoke bombs, they spin around for a while before picking up the chase.

In the early Eighties, Rally X stood proudly alongside Frogger and Space Invaders in the arcade halls of old. I remember it being one of the more difficult games of that era - the first few times you tried to play it, your pursuers would easily catch up with you (because they move slightly faster) and you'd be down three lives, and the 10p you'd spent on playing the game, much more quickly than if you'd opted to play one of its stablemates.

Trickysoft's BBC version retains both the super-smooth scrolling of the original and, I think because you can see a lot more of the maze, makes it a bit easier for the player to navigate it. That's not to say it's easy though - when you have five or more cars pursuing you, you'll need very finely honed reactions to survive. I can only get to sheet 8.

Back in the day, Superior Software produced a version of Rally X called Road Runner and so I gave that a quick replay to adjudge whether Rally X is better or worse. Unmistakably, it's better, mainly because Road Runner has such an odd way of plotting the car within the maze that it's just stupidly frustrating to play. So far, so good then. Trickysoft's version finds a gap in the BBC's software market, and it's very enjoyable, in much the same way that the odd game of Pac-Man remains enjoyable. You won't fire it up every evening, but you might come back to it a few times each year.

In fact, the only real problem with Rally X that I found was that it has an "attract mode" built in (i.e. if you don't press RETURN to start a game, it starts a non-playable demonstration game instead). This is a feature of many of Trickysoft's games and is usually not a problem. However, with Rally X I found that it was constantly not reacting to my command to start a new game but was building up the attract mode demonstration game instead. You know when it's doing it because, if the game proper is beginning, the groovy Rally X music starts playing whereas the demo game is silent. However, building up the maze takes a few seconds, and it's very tedious not being able to skip it when you want another go. It's also very confusing when you play the game the very first time because, of course, you think you are starting a real game, and then you wonder why the car is not obeying your controls!

Overall, this is good but not great. I wonder what arcade machine Trickysoft will convert next?