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Professor Potts has himself a problem. Working on his time machine (you know how mad professors do) he is attacked by terrorists. They smash his invention and accidentally create a hole in the fabric of time. This temporal vortex sucks the unlucky Professor into the time lanes, depositing him 10 million years BR (Before Racquel).

Being a forward-thinking sort of chap, Potts puts five teleporters and a stun gun in his pocket before the attack. Using these he must find his way back to the future (no, really?).

The only way he can do this thing is to guide any life-forms he encounters along their correct evolutionary paths, thus opening up the right temporal corridor for him to jump forward in time and get home before he will have been... about to be having... left, - or something along those lines, anyway. (Confused, moi?)

He must, however, perform this trick not just once but five times over to get back safely; if he correctly alters the status quo of the current time zone, the next becomes accessible and he can leap forward to start there.

The task in each zone involves giving Mother Nature a nudge in the right direction. In the land of the dinosaurs he must make sure that mankind actually happens. Of course, if he messes this one up the implications are immense.

If he succeeds he finds the cavemen need some advice on the finer technical specifications of the wheel, since for some reason they seem to prefer square ones. Next he must help Neolithic man keep warm during the Ice Age, and then medieval knights to handle the gunpowder they've discovered. The prof must use his teleporters to move objects around in the hope of giving the inhabitants of each zone the right idea. Of those plate spinners in the circus, trying to keep the earlier eras safe as well as press ahead.

The professor has three lives but little energy. His life force is sapped by standing in puzzles of ice water or being hit by volcanic fire. He can replenish this energy only by eating any fresh fruit he finds en route. Otherwise, the game is free of the normal arcade adventure constraints: the only time limit is that of time itself.

You'd do well to try and forget the theoretical feasibility of the plot, or lack of it: at heart Time Machine is an enjoyable knockabout cartoon adventure chock full of cute animals, temporal stereotypes and historical backdrops, all very cutely animated and in strong, simple colours.

There are only five screens per time zone, but each one is radically different in every time zone and there's more than enough variety to go around. The zone indicator makes for easy monitoring of your past and future efforts, showing in the clearest possible manner what's happening where and when - though you do have 25 areas to keep your eye on!

There's the option of either sound effects or music; take the effects every time, because the jingles come from The Land Taste Forgot.

The alterations that free up each zone are fairly obvious, but keeping them changed is tough. It's easy to have a hundred thousand years of hard toil spoiled in seconds. A real hair-tearer, Time Machine is relatively finishable in theory, but we all know what a complex theory relativity is.

Time Machine appears innocently simple to complete and then slaps you in the face time after time: there's always too much time (if you see what I mean) and not enough Professors for the job. It's a game that defeats players with its complexity, not how many levels it has. Packed with playability and originality, it will have you madly plugging holes in the temporal stream.