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There's been something of a fuss made lately over a Sega MegaDrive game called Sonic The Hedgehog - you may have heard about it. The praise is well deserved because Sonic is (in my book anyway) quite simply the best arcade game ever released for any console or home computer. It's very pretty, very fast and has bags of character - I mention this because many Amiga owners will have tried Sonic, and wondered about Sega's well documented refusal to release this on any hardware format other than Sega's own.

US Gold have been in there pitching for the Amiga rights, but as things currently stand they haven't had much luck. It looks as if Sega have got what they want - the underlying message is: "If you want to play something as good as Sonic, buy a MegaDrive." Sound commercial sense, you might say. I say, knickers to Sega!

Amiga producers are perfectly capable of conjuring up games that are just as good and just as fast as Sega's, and you don't have to go to Tokyo to find the necessary talent. Try Cambridge.

Robocod, like Sonic, is a colourful arcade platform romper with treasures to collect, kinda cute bad guys to bump off, and levels to complete. Yes, it's a formula that's been tried and tested so many times that it's on the verge of a cardiac arrest. But Robocod is different, because, well, because it's so different. It's almost as if the author sat down before he started and decided to re-write the rules of Amiga arcade platform games. Lord knows, we need something new.

James Pond is once again the hero character, but this time he's a fish with a metal suit (Robocod - geddit?) packed full of special attributes which would probably prove essential to all good fish heroes. Chief among these is his ability to move safely around in the open air without flapping about a bit and then making like a Sainsbury's Rainbow Trout.

In the original James Pond, our hero was out to find the evil Doc Maybe, and stop him polluting the sea (cue huge environmental yawn from readers). Now Maybe has toddled off with all Pond's penguin pals, and our hero has had to surface in order to get his buddies back. All that environmental nonsense has been trashed in favour of good old-fashioned fun - and what could be more fun than a game set largely in a huge factory which produces sweets, toys, presents and other desirable consumer products?

In fact, the game is built up of eight levels, each of which is based on a product theme. The first (and easiest!) is all cuddly toys, while the second is centred around sports gear. While the game progresses we move into the territory of musical goods, bath toys, cakes, card and board games, sweets and mechanical playthings. As you can imagine, this little lot leaves plenty of room for a delightful and ever-changing panorama of graphical tricks, humorous touches, novel bad-guys and - best of all - capricious gameplay.

And that's not all. This is a game that's not jsut big, not just huge - it's bloody gigantic. Each of the eight factories includes between three and eight levels, and very few of them are linear. You really have to explore, and even if you're getting a little bit lost, there're always lots and lots of good things to pick up and puzzles to solve. On each level there'll be a few of those penguins I mentioned before - to clear the level, you have to pick up a pre-designated number of your flightless chums, then find the exite (handily signposted by an 'exit' sign).

It's really not all that difficult to skip through the game, pick up the nice guys, and make for the next factory. But here's where Robocod is special - there are just so many jokes in the game, so much devilish chicanery, that you can't resist having a look round another corner, or climbing a huge series of platforms. It's all the most enticing because of the hero's large repetoire of movements. Of course (of course?) he can walk along on those odd little tail fins of his, and he can crouch and jump too. So far, so ordinary 0 what's much stranger is the way he can also stretch his robot body up to reach platforms, thus enabling him to swing along on his little fishy hands beneath them. He can bounce on top of baddies too, and whizz down hills at quite a lick (in much the same fashion as You-Know-Who-The-Hedgehog, actually).

On each level the style of gameplay changes and Pond's array of movements will often change to suit the new environment. There's a secret room that's made of jelly for instance, and of course Pond finds a way to deal with the difficulties this presents. Sometimes there are little gadgets which will give him extra capabilities (a set of wings, a car, a plane and so on), and while few of these tricks are original, it's a rarity to find them all together in one game.

They haven't been squeezed in here either. The game is blessed with absolutely loads of room to move around in, suffering from one of that feeling of claustrophobia which haunts even some of the best Amiga platformers (Toki and Magic Pockets being recent examples that spring to mind).

The trouble with the first James Pond game was that it was all so samey, and not a little difficult. By level four you were so bored, it didn't seem worthwhile investing all that much time on levels which were becoming increasingly, even ludicrously, challenging. In the yet-to-be-established (though we'd really like it to) tradition of sequel writers listening to the complaints of gamers, this wee problem has been resolved for the new game. Pond carries three batteries (he's a cyborg fish, remember?) and while he possesses at least one, he can't die. If you bump into a baddie, you lose a battery. This isn't so bad because there are enough batteries lying around to run a fair sized airport, let alone a small fish - add this to your three lives and three 'Game Continues' and even the crappiest of gamesplayer will have quite some fun romping around this game for some time (even if they don't get anywhere very much).

The game's big, you see - in something like Toki, you'd have the whole thing finished in no time with those little extras, but Robocod is so darned ginormous that this is most unlikely, even for the sharpest of games player.

I suppose gameplay is the most important part of it (it always is, isn't it?) but for me what carries this off is the sheer audacity of the thing. Programmer Chris Sorrell has shamelessly plundered every suitable game in existence for new ideas, and he's had the cheek to even tease a few a little (watch out for some neat Lemmings and Rainbow Islands gags). He's also had the good sense to raid popular culture, and there's everything here from 19th century literature through 1930s cinema to tacky chocolate bar advertisements. We're always complaining about games lacking any real wit or imagination, but from the punning title downwards this is packed with it. It would be wrong for me to spoil the fun - and anyway, you've really got to be there to enjoy the jokes - but let's just say that the incidental characters, the gentle touches of background wit, and the perplexingly ingenious nature of so many of the different levels make Robocod fun-time classic, and a surprise one at that.

I'm going to step onto hallowed ground now and say a very dangerous thing. When all is said and done, and all angles are considered, I reckon, without prejudice, that this just might (and I stress just might) be better than Rainbow Islands. There, I said it. Now buy Robocod, decide for yourself, and may God blow my trousers off if I'm wrong. Kaboom. Oh, ouch. (Ahem.)

Uppers: Superbly crafted platformer that kicks the genre right up the backside. It's what we've all been waiting for.

Downers: Well, all right then, maybe it's not quite as good as Rainbow Islands... but damn close!

One of the best games we've ever seen. It's original, without being clever-clever. It's funny, but with stacks of gameplay. And it's challenging without being impossible. Good times guaranteed!