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Heaven knows what Mr Carl Sagan would make of it all. One moment you're racing to the rescue of your betrothed and in the next, some second-rate Paul Daniels lookalike turns you into an ape with the kind of bad breath that would make even the great Jabba the Hut reach for his Clorets.

In order to regain your manly stature and lose that all-over body hair, you must knuckle drag your way through all six levels of wilderness - a la Milton Keynes - and finally rescue Miho, your righteous babe.

Toki is a platform shoot-'em-up in which you control Toki the ape. There are thirty different kinds of deviant inhabitants to kill - and don't forget the singularly cheesy terminator that kindly guards the end of each level.

Our hero spits out laser orbs, which do varying degrees of damage and, along the way, you can collect power-ups and add-ons. These range from flame throwers, which toast the fiends good and proper, to helmets, which provide limited invulnerability and look really fashionable - even on an ugly ape. Hold down the Fire button and you can spray the bullets in one particular direction while not actually moving. This is handy when there are multiple targets.

If life gets particularly hard, you can collect coins to help you out. These appear after you shoot the squadrons of flying jelly fish which swoop around at certain points on each level. Collect thirty of these and you get an extra life. Alternatively pick up the baby Tokis when he appears and you can obtain an extra life that way instead.

Apart from all the violent ogres and other monsters just waiting to do you in, there are also some thoroghly unnatural features: rickety cliffs can give way and send you into spike-filled traps for instance, or cone-shaped trees can explode and hurl globules of explosive at you.

Although Toki uses a small playing screen area, the whole look of the game is impressive - the backgrounds are neat, colourful and very effective. The various nasties also contribute to the unique flavour of each level.

The horizontal scrolling is smooth and effective. The sprites, although small, are detailed too and it's good to see that they don't slow down when there's a lot happening on-screen. Toki himself moves well and all the other sprites are cheerful and humorous.

Sound is pretty stanard, although there's a nice intro tune which is made (surprisingly) with the internal chip. Otherwise expect the usual blips and squelches.

Once you get used to the idea that you're controlling a laser-spitting gorilla, Toki is a lot of fun. For once, the control method is well thought out - you can't blame your totally miserable aim on your ST. The idea of having a controllable blast when you hold down the Fire button works particularly well. It enables you to lay waste to entire attack waves.

The major problem with the game lies in the small screen area. At the rate game design is going, you're soon going to need an electron-scanning microscope to see all the tiny images. This game particularly could have benefitted from a larger screen layout.

Toki's nothing new. All right, so you control a gorilla, but this doesn't make it anything more than a gun-toting platform game. Even so, it's very playable and generates that "one more go" feeling - surely this is the most important criterion? Toki is enjoyable hokum, certainly, and more fun than locking your key inside the car at Toddington service station. Even so, it's less fun than nude hang-gliding over Windsor Castle.