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I've always suspected that Road Runner is deeply Zen in concept. But then, I'm weird. If there's anyone on the planet who's within eyeshot of a TV and has never watched Wile E. Coyote strap an Acme rocket to his back and fly into a cliff then my name is Guggenheim. I said, I was weird.

Let's play pretend. Pretend you are Atari Coin Op Inc, and your close links to Warner Bros [like being owned by them - Ed] have got you the rights to do the computer version of the cartoon of the chase. How would you do it? Lots of running about, of course.

In fact that just about sums it up. Guide Road Runner through a series of progressively more difficult road conditions - starts off as M25 and ends up with potholes the size of Alan Sugar's petty cash fund - as your arch enemy WEC uses progressively sillier machines to catch you.

To expand the excitement to aneurism point you can also gobble up little piles of seeds as you meepmeep your way around. Moreover, if you should omit to ingest five groups of grain in a row you become faint and lose a life - a similar fate awaits should the doggone dog catch you.

And he has a magnet, which has a fatal attraction should you consume some kernels with added iron. One way to pull the birds, I s'pose. Cast back your mind to the TV cartoon. Remember the bit where Wile chased his prey into a tunnel, and was just about to follow when a certain sound is heard?

Wile turns to camera with a look of utter despair, his ears fall, followed in close formation by the rest of him as a truck/train whooshes out of the shaft. Well, there are trucks here too. You dodge them, and try and persuade Wile to hit them. He gets blasted. you get more points. The same is true for Acme Mines, which are studded about in various places in the game. You hit 'em, scrub a life. He hits 'em, bonus. It's quite simple. It's also the same for crevasses and boulders. Two legs bad, four legs good.

Now what would you imagine the delightfully appellated Tongue Bonus is? OK, I know what you at the back are thinking of. Too much Leather Goddesses... This is a kid's programme!

If you hang around, and let Coyote nearly catch you, as you pull away the Runner's tongue comes out in an universal gesture of contempt. And you get more points. Hence tongue bonus.

Of course, there is the terrible risk that he will catch you and drag you back to the beginning of the screen. Ummm... would you believe invisible paint? Again, the story is simple. You get the paint, you get invisible, you get hard to catch and you get more points. If the Coyote gets the Dulux invisimulsion then none of the above are true.

Apart from the lemonade - guess what part this beverage plays in the scheme of things - that's about all, folks.

I didn't like the Atari system one arcade game. I felt it underused the hardware which also gave us Paperboy and Marble Madness. So US Gold didn't have much to go on. What it has done is quite good.

The gameplay, what there is of it, is well reproduced. The graphic border is pretty but there lies the rub - the area within it is too small to play the game on. I disliked the way cut back to the beginning of the action when killed.

This is a tiresome game to play. Bits of it are good, but other aspects are frustrating. The arcade game had a trackball - running through the maze is more difficult with keys or a joystick and I often got stuck and caught.

Coyote runs too slowly early on, so you need to stop and wait for him. If he goes off the screen the beast picks up a rocket.

I think it was a mistake to try and convert this game, but what has been done is good.

The only good things about the arcade version were the splendid graphics and sound. Almost like the real thing. This adaptation is faithful to the arcade original, except it junks the graphics and sound.

The game is a rip-off, pixel-like. The action takes place in a small box, with tiny multi-coloured sprites flickering about. If you didn't know who they were supposed to be, you'd have trouble guessing.

And there's no real panache, no stylistic humour of the sort that made the cartoons so irresistible. What a pity.

By the way, the number of trademarks on the sleeve must break some kind of record. Did you know that "Beep! Beep!!" was a trademark of Warner Bros?