This C64 version of The Three Stooges begins with one of the funniest moments ever captured on the C64: the title screen and intro music which come on are for the Mirrorsoft adventure smash Defender Of The Crown. But after about twenty seconds a decidedly disrespectful Stooge's digitised voice butts in: "Hey! This looks like a kid's game". Brilliant!

Unfortunately, this really is The Three Stooges' high point. It's not so much that it's wildly different in play or feel to last month's screen-starred Amiga version - in fact, it's almost identical to its 16-bit brother in game concept.

The problem really lies in the fact that a large dollop of Stooges' appeal on the Amiga was due to the look of the game. The graphics, dang near cartoon standard, wrapped up what was essentially a mish mash of different visual and game ideas in a marvellously witty package.

On the C64, sadly, much of the graphic brilliance is lost. It's not that The Three Stooges looks bad. It's just that it doesn't look good enough to hold your attention for hours on end. And, unfortunately, it doesn't play well enough to, either.

For those of you who missed last month's Amiga review, here's the scenario: those dim but well-meaning stars of the silver screen, The Three Stooges, have pledged to raise sufficient money to bail out an orphanage threatened by a heartless landlord.

You've got thirty days before the landlord kicks the widow and her orphanage out.

Each day you get a chance to try a variety of different jobs or other money-raising schemes. Your choices are represented on the top of the screen, above the Stooges' heads as they stand kicking their heels in the street. There are six choices given for each day, and at least one of these will always be a Mousetrap. There are also a selection of the following: Trivia, Question Mark, Slap Fight, Landlord Money, Soup, Hospital, Pie and Boxing.

Moe's hand icon appears and moves between the six choices at random. You've got to try to stop it on the option you want within nine seconds, or else Moe's hand will decide for itself.

If you land on Mousetrap, it snaps off one of Moe's fingers, which counts as one life lost.

If you hit Money, you have to simply sit back and wait while the happy trio saunter down the road and stumble upon a wallet or sack of cash. The only variable here is just how much dosh they're lucky enough to score.

It's the same deal if you hit Landlord: you know you're going to be hit for rent or tax, only the amount is in question.

Trivia means that you get to answer three triple-choice questions on incredibly obscure details of The Stooges' careers.

With Question Mark, you may either win or lose money.

Slap-fight is a short belly-thump and ear-tweak event between the hapless trio in which you play Curly and one of your mates stands on either side of you. Above your head is a meter which represents the speed at which the hand icon moves between options in the choice phase. Each blow delivered by you reduces the speed meter level and each blow suffered increasing it. Inevitably, I ended up losing out, with the meter being topped up to full speed, thereby making my choices on subsequent days even less easy to control.

All of the foregoing events are only intermittently interactive - most of the work is done by the computer, with you watching on. The four events which do involve a bit more participation are all accompanied by furious disk-removal-and-flipping-over activities - very wearing indeed.

The best of these, for my money is the Soup cracker eating competition, in which you have to use your spoon to scoop crackers out of your soup before lurking oysters can. Not far behind is the Paperboy-esque Boxing, in which you guide Larry weaving along a crowded pavement as he tries to acquire a new violin.

The Hospital scene, in which you guide a trolly-train through a crowded emergency ward corridor, mowing down all in your path which was a laugh on the Amiga, just seems boring on the C64 without the brilliant graphics. And, as for the Pie Fight, I found it impossible to control where the Stooges threw the pies.

All sounds slightly bitty, doesn't it? Well, in the cold light of day, so was the Amiga version, I suppose, but somehow its cartoon-standard graphics seemed to hold it all together. On the C64, the combination of frequent loading delays, insubstantial gameplay and (relatively) low-res graphics strips away the charm to reveal a disappointing bundle of not-quite-there ideas.