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The first game I ever fell in love with was called Styx. You had two roving 'sticks' of energy shifting randomly around the screen and a couple of malevolent dots which chased you. You simply had to trap the sticks in as little of the screen as possible, by drawing lines to block them off. One touch from the nasties and you were knackered.

This was probably the most simple game ever invented and one of the most addictive. It asked you to think quickly and appealed to your greed and pride. It wasn't enough to be content with the 75% of the screen you needed to fill, you wanted more for the points, and you didn't want to wait your moment patiently.

Zolyx has nothing to do with Styx at all. Just kidding. Zolyx has everything to do with it. It is an updated, well, tweaked, version of Styx which many journos have been going ape about since they saw a copy. Let me say now it's still the most fun you can have drawing a straight line, but it ain't as good.

Zolyx may be a golden oldie but it's lost some of its appeal. It seems less polished and is certainly less colourful. It is also much, much harder. Three dots bounce around the screen whilst two dots patrol the perimeters. You must try and box the dots whilst avoiding the attention of the others. As you fill in sections of the screen so the two roving dots have more space to move around in. However, each time you fill some screen in, it just turns that area light blue. In Styx you could build up a coloured series of geometric squares and rectangles.

The limitations of the latest version haven't undermined the playability of this old classic, but when you consider that a version has just appeared in the arcades again with graphic backgrounds and characters. Zolyx would have benefitted so much from a few additions like these and maybe some great music.

A good cheapo, but one that with a bit of imagination and ambition could have been so much better. Look at Arkanoid - Breakout updated. It's still going to be a hit but it's a long way short of taking us where we should be going. Old misery's moaning again.