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Sheer Panic is another version of that well-known game involving running up and down ladders and beating aliens over the head with a shovel. According to Visions you are "mining for magnetic quartz in a Dromedan Leisure Complex..." Oh, never mind all that, we all know the objective is hitting meanies with shovels and amassing high scores for doing so.

Visions is a new company which has launched itself "Imagine-style" with lots of glossy colour adverts, though the spending doesn't stop when it comes to the cassette either, with a full-colour cover showing a cartoon of a demented earthling attempting to deal with a host of slavering aliens.

The instructions are included in the game, should there be anyone who needs them, and Sheer Panic can be played with either a Kempston joystick of keyboard control. This layout is a little confusing, to say the least, using the already silly arrangement of arrow keys and then rearranging them! So, the down arrow moves you left, the up arrow right, the right arrow up and the 9 key down. The joystick, too, takes more than a little getting used to, the digging being done by pushing the joystick up but in the direction you're facing, i.e. north west or north east, and any rapid repair work by moving it south west or south east.

Nimble footwork proved a problem at first, as the stick also seems to have to be centred each time before the little man would start moving. One or two nasty deaths resulted, but perseverance was rewarded with a certain dexterity.

As to the man, he's your typical Swan Vestas creation, though he leaps around smoothly enough once the controls have been mastered.

In case you don't know, the idea of the game is that you're running round a construction of platforms and ladders, pursued by meanies. You can dig holes, and if a meanie falls in and you can hit it on the head it goes to meet the meanie maker. In this version there are red meanies who have to plummet through one hole, blue ones who need two holes beneath each other to see them off, and white ones who require three holes.

There's no choice of skill level but the game will progress through nine levels as you go, with a maximum of seven meanies after you are one time.

Yet another variation on yet another arcade game, Sheer Panic is as good as any of the other 57 varieties around, though if the graphics matched the cassette cover it would be a winner.