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What is the hoariest old chestnut of an idea you can think of for a game? Space Invaders? Breakout? Pong? Promise you won't stop reading this when I tell you what sort of game this is? Cross your joystick and swear on your infinite life? Okay, it's a version of Pong.

What, still with us? Good, Room Ten is the latest CRL game and is a follow up to Tau Ceti, the shoot-em-up planet exploration game. Obviously Pete Cooke, programmer of Tau Ceti, wanted to do something a little different this time but still keep the theme going. So he's turned his Pong game into a recreational activity for Galcorp space pilots to play after a hard day zapping droids.

It's quite simple to explain. Room Ten is where it all takes place. The game is essentially 3D Pong, and each player has a bat with which they must return a ball. The ball can bounce off the side walls, ceiling and floor, but if it reaches the end wall behind a player, the player concedes five points. The first player to reach 35 points wins.

When playing the game, there are two views of the court shown. The top half of the screen shows player one's view of the court, while the bottom half shows player two's. The bats are very large, being about a quarter of the area of the rear wall.

Your view is looking through your own bat at the action taking place. The bats and the room are shown in wire frame graphics with the ball and floor being solid.

As you move the bat with a joystick, or the keyboard, you will notice that the bat has inertia. Well of course, because the game takes place in zero gravity and your bat colliding with the wall makes a crashing sound.

You can select whether to play against a human or computer opponent. Against a computer opponent there are three levels of difficulty. The game can be played at several speeds, although there seems very little difference between them. The computer opponent is quite cunning and at medium and high skill levels is tricky to beat. The closer the ball hits the edge of the bat, the more acute the angle the ball travels away. The computer opponent, given a simple return, will always line up an edge to make the hall bounce back off the walls and ceiling.

Floor to ceiling is a short distance for the ball to travel, so getting an angle to bounce the ball off the floor makes it a difficult shot to return.

There are many options in the game. I have mentioned changing the speed and skill levels but it is also possible to select whether to be player one or two and whether player one or two is a human player or the computer. This seems a bit confusing but it means you can set the game up and play against one of your friends or sit hack and watch the computer play itself. The keys are fully redefinable but initially the joystick is not set up.

When I first saw the name Room Ten, I imagined it would be a game involving a large maze and lots of rooms. Wrong again. However the idea of a hi-tech 3D ping-pong game is certainly a novel one and is quite a step up from the very first arcade game Pong.

The game looks as though a great deal of effort has been afforded in every detail and plays very well.

My only gripe is that the amount of deflection imparted to the ball when it is hit nearer the edge of the bat should have been greater. Some rallies can go on for quite a while before a mistake is made.

The provision of faster levels does make up for this, though, and so I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the game, particularly if you can find another person to play against.

If you have ever wondered what life is like for a table tennis bat then Room Ten is the place to be.

The bat control is a little sluggish but some rallies still get the blood pressure up. The roof and walls make Room Ten look like real tennis or a sort of cross between squash and tennis. If you play against several other players and swap from the top to bottom you can easily lose track of which part of the screen you are supposed to be looking at.

With its roots so firmly in the past of computer games Room Ten is surprisingly up to date.

It's nice to see an old idea reworked into an up-to-date game. Room Ten is very playable.

The 3D effect is very nearly state of the art, giving the old Telly Tennis idea new life. The sound effects are a bit dull though and after a while the game begins to pall. There are lots of options, but unfortunately none have much effect on the game. I would have liked something to liven it up a little when playing the computer.

Room Ten is great for two players and has much scope for mini tournaments when you've got a crowd round.