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You'll get cred points for putting Space Harrier or Gauntlet on your screen. But what about something that describes itself as the first computer-assisted cookery game? Leave it out, you say in your best Cockney. Well don't, because The Big Deal is good fun - even if you can't boil an egg.

The Big Deal marks the return of Floyd The Droid, now employed as a robot in the kitchens of one of the big restaurants. He's more Floyd on food these days. His job is to prepare fast food faster. If the experiment succeeds, Big will robotise all its 32,000 kitchens. UB40 owners stay well clear.

The game's idea is pretty simple. Floyd starts the day in the kitchen, ready to take orders. As soon as a customer comes in, the order scrolls across and you control Floyd as he gathers the ingredients, prepares them and finally puts the finished order on the conveyor belt.

Of course, the difficult bit is doing it. You have to know where everything is, what the recipes for meals are and how to prepare them. The exact recipe can be called up but you must discover where all the ingredients are for yourself. There's a fridge, a cupboard, various cookers for frying, roasting and boiling, sauce and drinks dispensers, sink and garbage can. In all, a kitchen to make Della Smith go green.

To add to your headaches, there's a time limit for each other and they mount up as more customers arrive, up to five at any one time. Speech bubbles indicate when they are getting impatient and some of them resort to throwing chairs at you, just like our staff canteen.

Sending up the wrong order results in the box being thrown back at you. Wouldn't you like to do that in MacDonalds?

Luckily, you can make things easier for yourself by programming Floyd to prepare an order automatically, say French fries and mayo or roast beef sandwich and choke (shouldn't that be coke?). When you're confident, you can execute all the steps, you record them and Floyd does it all unassisted on playback.

Up to three programs can be recorded in this way and you'll need them, especially when you get orders like Bugs Bunny (filet mignon, asparagus, macaroni and white sauce). Your programs can also be saved to tape or disk for future use.

If customers get really nasty, Floyd can pacify them with a haute cuisine TV dinner which he heats up in his built-in microwave. But these must be used sparingly because there's only three of them.

At the end of the day, you get a detailed breakdown of your performance. Do well and you move to a bigger restaurant with more complex dishes.

What makes The Big Deal such a good game is that it's an original idea that's been very well thought out and implemented. Graphically, it's all very well done, the screen being split into four windows. So you can see customers walking in and out and you get a closeup of whatever food you're preparing.

Music is nice and cheerful too, with "Has anybody seen my girl" playing throughout. But I reckon there are still a few bugs around. Sometimes I finished up with pizzas when I got an egg out of the fridge. Dumping them in the garbage can didn't get rid of them. What made it worse was that nobody actually ordered pizza.

Big Deal is a simple game that's difficult to play. If you enjoy working under pressure, having to do a million things at once and in an organised way, this is the game for you (either that or apply for my job). But whether the idea is strong enough to keep you hooked is another matter. Personally, I got bored after a few hours. So here's my recipe for the Buciak five-tier megaburger [No thanks - Ed].