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No, I don't know what it means either. But I do know that I worry when I'm given nine lives to play with. And look, that's how many Hoi offers.

I'm worried. More lives means more trouble. It means the author is compensating for his poor, unnecessarily frustrating design. There's plenty of that in Hoi.

Hoi is in fact the name of a dinosaur who's on a quest through the five levels of Madlands to find his true love. Fine. The first level's a 'country' scene and the second's full of machines. In the third level, Hoi wears a jetpack and shoots a gun, while on level four there's an underwater section and a funny jumping buggy to drive. The fifth and final level carries a warning that is wacky stroboscopic effects could trigger epileptic seizures.

Hoi can walk, jump and climb ladders - a limited range of potentially flexible skills which in this case are sluggish to enact on screen and not used to the full. Using his talents, Hoi avoids monsters, some of them flying, some of them exploding, and some of them homing in on the dotty dino - nothing new or spectacular there. Hoi collects bonus points, time bombs and air tanks, and throws switches to open and close barriers. He dodges spikes, slides along some blocks and uses moving platforms and teleporters. Oh, and there are a few hidden bonus sections to play too.

Hoi can't touch anything animate, which is fair enough, but he also can't fall any great distance without dying, and that sticks in my craw. The collision detection between Hoi and the big, bold, colourful and boring scenery and characters is poor. And while I'm moaning, I should mention the poor disk management which only serves to highlight the insufficient visual, aural and playable rewards for the time you are left waiting.

Hoi is the sort of frustratingly playable junk I'd expect to see as part of the Shareware scene or at worst at a budget price. But I like it. This simple stuff appeals to my mentally-challenged nature, more so because it has 'SPANKY' as a high-score entry, and that's funny, see.

Old-fashioned platform entertainment which is strictly for the melancholy with money to burn. Oh, it's a laugh, but I'm not paying you that much for a Good Time, vicar.