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After ants and centipedes and snakes, it was only a matter of time till we saw a flea in the starring role, and the inevitable question is does the game come up to scratch?

It takes a while to puzzle out that the purpose of the game is to survive and get out of the cave. Not even the controls are fully explained.

The cassette cover is full of rhyming rubbish like "Save from the monster me, else I be a very sad flea, SPOING! SPOING! SPOING! SPOING! SPOING!" Instead of all this tosh couldn't we have had some instructions?

Bugaboo proves, however, to be a compulsive game of great fun. The loading is done in style, with several screens to keep you occupied till you get a note of the controls. One line also says "Best time to exit," but has nothing after it, so I imagine it's a best score record you ever manage to exit the caves.

Your flea begins on the floor of a series of multicoloured linked underground caverns, full of ledges, bushes, trees, rocks and spiders. At the bottom left a timer starts ticking, and at bottom right it says: "Level: 82".

Also beneath the screen are a row of dots which change colour as you press either of the jump keys, and the more that have changed colour when you release the key the further the flea will jump. Again, this takes some working out.

You're not alone in these passages either as there's a monster resembling a pterodactyl trying to make a meal of you. There are one or two nooks and crannies where you can hide, but not so many and it's usually a case of hopping frantically to safety... and not making it. You can fall as far and as often as you like without harm, but if the monster gets you then you start again.

There doesn't seem to be a time limit on the action, and you need to be very nifty with the scrolling in order to look all around you.

The speed and graphics are excellent, with you having to work out optimum routes to progress up the screen... though I wish I knew what the Bugaboo was going on.