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There is a word in the English language that is grossly overused, especially in the software industry. That word is... addictive. Software companies use this word to plug almost every game they release. Reviewers use it to describe any game that's half-decent. Every now and then we forget what this word really means. Gremlin have kindly given us a reminder, Trailblazer.

This is about as close as you're likely to get to addictive. I just can't put the bloody game down.

The game itself plays quite originally, although you can't help to notice that it took almost all its inspiration from Bounder and maybe a little from Activision's BallBlazer.

You must guide a football along a trail in deep, deep space. This may seem a strange thing to want to do but it makes a fun game all the same. The trail is made up of loads of different coloured squares. If you wish, you can jump over some of the squares, but this is not always necessary. Here is a short but sweet guide to what the squares do.

1. Blue Squares
   These are definitely the most practical squares. They give you a good hard bounce, which is a great help in avoiding the many black holes around the place. The blue squares appear regularly.
2. Black Squares
   Avoid at all costs. There are millions of these just waiting to be fallen down, and waste your precious time.
3. Red Squares
   A pain. They just slow you down. Try to avoid.
4. Cyan Squares
   A pain. If you get caught up on these, consider yourself in trouble. They have a magnetic force, which can pull you off the edge of the trail. Luckily they don't appear too often.
5. Green Squares
   Handy these. They give you a nice little boost of speed.
6. Grey and Brown Squares
   These are just normal play squares (thank goodness!)
7. Purple Blocks
   These are downright irritating. Hit one of these and prepare to be bounced violently backwards.
8. White Squares
   These are totally and utterly brilliant. Touch one of these and prepare to "Warp!"

"Warp!" is the speed of light, at which you will travel for a few seconds, or until you hit a nasty square of some sort. If you take a "Warp!" successfully, you can finish the course in around five seconds. Good fun, but they are very rare.

If you take a look at the screen shot, you will see that Trailblazer has a split-screen. (These are the normal two-player arcade games. It has a one-player trial which is a practice mode. It has a straight player vs player mode, without a time limit. Which is held over three courses. You can also play against a robot, well, three robots, each of different difficulty, but each one willing to knock you off the path.

Trailblazer scrolls extremely fast, towards you - a very effective piece of game design. It is this 3D speed that sets Trailblazer apart from Bounder. Another major improvement on Bounder is that it has twenty-one levels, far more than Bounder.

You are allowed seven jumps per level. Any jumps that you don't use on a level will be added to, your next one, but you can only have a maximum of nine jumps at any point.

Time is very precious in Trailblazer, so it's best to save as much as possible on the easy levels so that you can use it on the more difficult ones. After every three levels, there is a bonus sheet which is similar to the old electronic game Simon. (Remember that?)

First you watch the ball jump onto three different squares, and then you must copy its exact movements. Get it right and you will earn yourself a thousand points, then the ball will go on to do four squares which you must copy, and so on. Just like Bounder!

It's extremely hard to put into words what's so special about Trailblazer without using spent cliches like 'addictive' or whatever.

All I can say is you won't rest until you've reached the last level.

Trailblazer is more evidence of Gremlin's emergence as one of the best British software houses. Everything they put out nowadays seems to be pretty tasty, especially this.