ARENA GETS THUMBS DOWN

Memory: 48K
Price: £5.50
Joystick. Kempston, Sinclair, Cursor

For once you do not have to save the world - merely your own unlovely hide, battling hordes of mutants in the stadium of the future.

The game is a matter of killing as many foes as possible while moving round the rectangular arena. When you clear a screen, a new wave of mutants appears. The only mildly original twist is that the arena begins to shrink as the game progresses.

Nor is it the fastest arcade game in existence, particularly if you want to fire continuously.

Arena 3000 may appeal to those who believe that just because you have six legs or a green torso you deserve to be obliterated but there are no obvious miracles of programming to justify Microdeal producing yet another such game.