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You don't stand a ghost of a chance when these boys get going.

When you are playing The Real Ghostbusters, as opposed to the False Ghostbusters or The Ghostbusters Who Weren't Much Good I suggest you turn down the sound and put on the Ray Parker Jnr record or even hum the music. Great CPC music is not what you are getting.

The Real Ghostbusters is the conversion of the television cartoon serial which is basically there to cash in on the success of the hit movie. One could say the same about the game, because it is about as much fun as eating a disc.

I had a bad feeling from the moment I followed the instructions on the inlay and typed RUN"DISC. The correct instruction was RUN" RUB. I then spent five minutes playing hunt the fire key because it is not C, as the instructions would have you believe although you can use the joystick to move round, and fire.

The plot for this excuse in marketing potential is that there are creatures everywhere. You must shoot them with your gun - limitless bullets - and then suck them into your backpack with your proton beam. Once you have cleared one level you have to do it again and again and again.

The setting beats me. Half the time it is almost impossible to tell what the scenery is - just that it is green. Yes, the colour scheme is rather disgusting.

Four-colour graphics - red, yellow, black and plenty of green - crude eight-way scrolling, poor sprites and dodgy sprite detection are fife main features of the game.

That aside, what do you have to do? Scene one is set on the rooftops of the city. You are required to cross them to reach the end level guardian.

Destroying this guardian liberates a key which will open the gateway to the next level. Between levels you unload your traps, bonus points being given for each captured ghost. Occasionally a captured ghost will yield a bonus.

This can take several forms but the most useful is the summoning of Slimer. This friendly green spirit hovers round your location, seeing off any nasties which stray too close.

On level two you must scale a series of cliffs and face all manner of slimy beasts until encountering the end level guardian which resembles an eye on a elastic band.

Accurate manoeuvering is wishful thinking and all-action entertainment it is not.

Your bullets are big, about hand grenade size, so I am not surprised that they go through most of the monsters in one go.

The monsters are not defenceless, either. They have clammy hands, slimy tentacles, bolts of electricity, guns and that suspect sprite detection to help win the war for the force of vileness.

After half an hour I left them to it. The Real Ghostbusters is little more than a good marketing concept.