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At last! It's the official sequel to one of the best games ever created! But is it as Super as it claims? Well... almost, says Gary Whitta.

As both an Amiga owner devotee, I am all too familiar with the horrendously raw deal that Commodore-owning fans of the Russian classic have been getting over the years. There simply isn't a decent official version available for the machine. In fact there's only ever been one - the original Mirrorsoft version (now de-listed) which is, as any aficionado will tell you, what is known in the trade as Complete Crap. Is it any wonder that fans of the game (and there are a few) have to seek solace in the vastly superior unofficial Public Domain and Gameboy versions?

But now there's a new guy in town. Spectrum Holobyte, usually better known for high-brow flight simulations like the Falcon series, has turned up with Super Tetris, the latest in a long line (counting unofficial "tributes") of so-called definitive versions of the classic puzzler.

Played out amid a myriad of attractive backdrops based on the Moscow State Circus (the Russian theme has at least been retained), the game is effectively the same old story, albeit with an interesting new twist on the rules and more options than you could shake a stick at. So, without further ado...

You'd think that with a game concept as pure and perfect as Tetris, it'd be virtually impossible to do a really bad version. Unfortunately this philosophy has been proved wrong time after time, first by the official Mirrorsoft version, then by a string of sloppy "tributes".

Super Tetris, however, ranks as one of the more successful interpretations of the classic dextral puzzler. Though the developers have taken the bold (and some might feel dodgy) step of fiddling with the basic gameplay, the new game is no less addictive or challenging than the original. It isn't any better, but it certainly isn't any worse. It's debatable whether the new features add to or detract from the gameplay, but for my money it's a bit of both.

The treasure icons work well by giving you something extra to aim for and think about, but the bombs don't. They would have, had they appeared slightly less frequently, but with them turning up every time you get rid of a line, they tend to hold up the game's natural flow and, after a while, get on the nerves.

I'm no fan of the two-player options either. With two sets of blocks in the same pit, all you ever do is get in each other's way - and would someone like to tell me why, with a game that only uses half of the screen area, you can only have the dual-pit head-to-head game by linking two machines together? Why not just put the other pit on the same screen in the redundant space, for heaven's sake? Sloppiness like this annoys the hell out of me, and the final mark has suffered accordingly.

Nevertheless, Super Tetris is the best official version of the game - although I'm not sure if many people will be prepared to fork out £30 for it when so many comparable PD versions are available at a fraction of the price!