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The inlay to Rygar is pretty abysmal stuff: "4.5 billion year have passed since the earth's creation. Many dominators have ruled in all their glory. But Time, their greatest enemy, ultimately defeated their reign. And now a new Dominator's reign begins..."

Yes, it's appalling guff, isn't it? Still, look on the bright side - you've only got to read this review once, whereas if you are unlucky enough to become the owner of a copy of Rygar you'll have to sit through the computer laboriously typing out this nonsense after each lost game before it'll consent to let you have another go.

No, Rygar certainly isn't a game to play or review with a hangover. It's a conversion of a pretty average coin-op in which you play some otherworldy hero who plods through life zapping everything that comes his way.

You start off with five lives, and a generous time limit on each level. The graphics are small and mean, rendering any positive identification of your enemies impossible, but they seem to be a selection of hooded monks, hermit crabs, Catherine wheels, warrior-bearing gryphons and translucent desert rats.

You've got to run or bounce through the scene zapping nasties (your weapon, whatever it is, only has a very short range so you don't get to kill them until they're at close quarters), jumping over obstacles and ravines, picking up extra icons which are left when you zap certain rocks (these give extra time or smart bomb everything on screen), crouching low to get the crawlers and leaping high to catch the airborne meanies.

The colour scheme, the lack of graphic quality and the speed and smallness of the sprites all combine to make this a frustrating and difficult game to negotiate. Often you're not really sure why you've lost a life, or at whose hands.

Even worse is the joystick control - whether or not you manage to make it over the ravines seems to be more or less a matter of luck, and I certainly wound up losing at least two of my lives per go when, despite feverish jerking of the stick in vain attempts at lift-off, my character lazily descended into the pit in front of him.

At the end of each level you have a brief breather while your scores and time bonuses are totted up, then it's out once more into the next scene. The different levels aren't really all that different, with most of the obstacles and enemies repeated with minor variations.

When you lose your fifth and final life, your onscreen character's body is plucked from the ground and carried off by what bears a passing resemblance to a winged lion. At least, most of the time: on the third level, however, I noticed that my corpse floated off of its own accord while at the other side of the screen the flying feline hovered, obviously wondering why his prey had left without him!

If Rygar sold for £1.99, it would be a poor piece of budget software by today's standards. To release it as a full-price top-of-the-range coin-op conversion is just a bad joke. If this is US Gold's idea of a strong pre-Christmas release, they'd better think again.