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Can you imagine a cross between Rainbow Islands and Rick Dangerous? Would you want to? Would it be a good idea in the first place? Well, I don't know about the first two, but if the result would be a game like Erik, then the answer to the third question would have to be a "Yes".

It's a funny little platform game, this Erik (up all night thinking of that title, were we boys?). You get 28 levels (in four worlds) of fairly small vertically-scrolling caverns, the object in each of which is to collect the key to the locked door leading to the next stage. You get baddies to blast, treasure to collect, and money to pick up and spend on sexier weapons to blast the baddies with, as well as secret rooms and big end-of-level bosses and all the other trappings of these new-fangled modern arcade platformer things. There's nothing very remarkable on show, just a load of old features glued together in a charmingly cohesive way to turn up something a bit different, but it's all so deeply enjoyable to play that that's more than enough.

Recognisable enough to be familiar, original enough to be interesting, this has to be a bit of a hit.

Simplistic, but addictive original platformer, with quite a few neat touches. Not too bad at all.