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Joining the already large market of re-vamped early '80s pioneer games, Ricochet is the only budget BreakOut spinoff to date and well worth the sum asked.

As with most of these types of game a plot is not really required. There's a bat at the bottom of the screen, and a brick wall at the top, the aim of the game being to smash all the bricks to proceed to the next level. However, on Ricochet, above the bricks written in large circled letters in the word GRAVY, and under the bat is the screen's name which changes to men and score after a short period.

Ricochet takes the BreakOut format to the lighter side of computer entertainment, as demonstrated by some of the more wry screens. One of my favourites knocks the stockbrokers, with the BP symbol in one corner and a slumping progress chart in the other. In between each level is a totally insignificant bonus screen, with titles like Manic Helicopters for a screen where you're attacked by flying heads. For destroying the various entities on the bonus rounds you get one meagre point for everyone rammed but a nice round hundred for each shot.

There are several different weapons, along with several different ways of collecting them. The best of the bunch is the Greased Lightning. Anyone who has ever played R-Type or knows what the lasers in that are like will instantly know what this looks like. Then there's the Gism Gun, which sounds more fun than it really is. In fact it's nothing more than the standard upwardly mobile brick thrashing laser. Then there's Magno Bat (catch), and Violent ball. Instead of giving you a laser, this equips your ball with one, the direction in which it fires is controlled by the joystick. Whilst effective, this can often leave you bat stranded in an awkward position. My fave has to be the Angry Yag, a little geezer who appears from time to time showering the screen with balls.

The way to get a weapon is simple: every time you destroy a large, coloured block it drops a token, causing the letter corresponding to that colour on the word GRAVY to change colour. After five tokens have been collected, the letter starts to flash and then the weapon of the letter of the token is yours. Alternatively, you might find it easier to bounce your ball off one of the flashing blocks and collect the instant credit from that.

On top of what is already available, you can collect hyper warps to take you to the next level, along with extra men and slowdowns. What these have in common apart from being in the same game, is that they all have to be used by going to a separate screen. On this screen, reached by pressing the space bar, is a total of the items you have plus the current ball speed (1-9). When you obtain a weapon or use an extra life the ball speed goes up by one, so the slowdowns tend to be more vital than in say, Arkanoid, where they're often of nuisance value.

One other feature is the useful suicide key, which allows you to go to the next level by forfeiting a life. But what makes Ricochet great is the construction kit. It's not very comprehensive but it does make a pleasant change from the normal stuff. Then there's the sixteen randomly selected high-score tables which are reselected when you reload.

Apart from the nice title screen 'toon' the sound is pretty mediocre, the graphics the same, with some weird sprites and screens which could only be the product of somebody who was totally smashed out of their minds at the time of programming.

Incomparable with Arkanoid in nearly every way, Ricochet still offers a lot for two squid. Cheap for a game with so much balls.