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Video killed the radio star, and now it's sucked your kid into the television. Poor Billy is destined to spend the rest of his life hobnobbing with dusty diodes and tubes, unless you can save him from a fate worse than Jeremy Beadle.

Videokid is a cutesy platform game which spans five worlds, each with a different theme - medieval, western, science fiction, gangster and horror. You have to guide Billy through each level, popping off baddies and collecting bonuses, before confronting the dreaded end-of-level guardian. It all sounds a bit corny, doesn't it? There's nothing wrong with keeping to a well-established genre, but you expect games like Videokid to be either very good at what they do, or to be sufficiently novel to keep your interest. Videokid, however, does neither. It just plods along in the slow lane, failing to capture your imagination.

A major drawback is the game's difficulty level - it starts off tricky and just gets harder. You're given no time to ease yourself into the game, but are baddered by a lot of the sprites and the kind of scrolling that kills you off as soon as you touch the edge of the screen.

Unfortunately, no anmount of special weapons, lives or continues can make up for the fact that Videokid is dead boring. The gameplay is joystick-driven with the Spacebar being used when you want to activate Billy's smart bombs. Graphically, the sprites are well drawn, but the animation is slightly on the jerky side and is not very inspiring. The sound effects and music consist of the usual ST soundchip nonsense.

Videokid is a mediocre platform game that manages to be both boring and frustrating. It is just like repeatedly dropping something on the floor - you really hate having to pick it up, but on the other hand, you just can't leave it festering for a couple of months on your carpet.

If you like your platform games to be original, exciting and fun (choosey, hey?) then steer well clear of Videokid. There are much better games in the ST platform world - Fire And Ice, Wizkid or Rainbow Islands are just a few examples of real platform games. They are undoubtedly better than Videokid.

Well drawn sprites and difficult gameplay.

It's boring, frustrating and incredibly cliched.