Arcade Park: Volume 1

There's an almost hypnotic quality to the flashing lights and sounds of an amusement arcade. Perky theme tunes and the roar of engines blend bewitchingly with hails of bullets, falling coins and a jukebox playing classic tunes from an earlier decade.

Tapping in to the nostalgia of misspent youth, Herocraft has taken three classic arcade games, given them a makeover and bundled them together in Arcade Park.

Arcade Ball is a souped-up version of Breakout. Using a paddle at the bottom of the screen, you must guide a ball towards a pattern of bricks, destroying them on contact. Occasionally, a brick will release an upgrade or downgrade for your paddle. These float slowly to the bottom of the screen, and can be activated by 'catching' them with your paddle.

The main challenge is to split your attention between paddle and ball, making sure the latter doesn't drop off the bottom of the screen.

Or at least it should be. Arcade Ball has an irritating flaw – the paddle moves somewhat sluggishly compared to the zippy flight of your spherical weapon. Despite the inclusion of an upgrade to increase its speed, this ponderous motion gives you little room for error. Often, you'll find the ball rebounding too quickly for you to reach it.

As if this weren't annoying enough, Arcade Ball's selection of enemies includes a flying mouth which imprisons your ball within its jabbering maw. This causes you to lose a life, and spawns a second ball atop the paddle. If this replacement ball comes into contact with the mouth-beast then the original ball is returned to play, only without refunding your stolen life. Considering how little control you have over the flight of the ball once it's airborne this is infuriating.

Persevere and Arcade Ball can still provide some entertainment, but never quite enough to offset the frustration.

Moving on, there's Asteroids. Based on Atari's classic of the same name, this newer version features much improved graphics – the flying wedge of the original is replaced with a detailed rocket ship, for instance.

Play starts with the ship in the center of the screen. You control the rocket via keypad or stick and can rotate left or right, thrust forwards and fire a single energy beam. This energy beam is used to destroy the various asteroids and flying saucers that move around the screen.

The asteroids float in a predictable path until destroyed, sometimes splitting into smaller asteroids that fly off in random directions. The saucers are a different proposition, changing direction frequently and erratically. The larger ships fire missiles towards your own vessel, though these can be destroyed like any other obstacle.

Ships and asteroids alike can freely wrap from one edge of the screen to its opposite side unless you choose to play with 'Bounds On'. This places an invisible wall around the field of play.

A key problem with Asteroids is the scale of the action, with the largest enemy ships taking up nearly a quarter of the screen. As these ships require multiple hits to destroy you can sometimes lose a life before you have time to move or rotate your ship to defend yourself. There's also an overlap of about a quarter inch at the edges of the screen. You can easily lose track of both yourself and your foes in this off-screen deadzone.

Completing the collection is Rushman. Drawing inspiration from Pac-Man, Rushman features four different game modes, which all involve the navigation of a variety of mazes. These mazes feature linked teleporters – enter one of these portals and you are instantly transferred to its twin on the other side of the screen.

Original mode is classic Pac-Man territory. Move your voracious avatar around each maze and consume all of the little yellow 'spots' whilst evading the hunter enemies. Scattered around each level are some slightly larger 'superspots' which temporarily turn the hunters purple and reduce their speed.

Turning the hunters purple enables you to eat them, turning them into a pair of eyes. These eyes make their way to the middle of the screen and reconstitute a fresh hunter who will rejoin the chase. When all the spots are gone the level is complete and you move on to the next.

In Fruit mode you have the same mazes, only without any spots. Instead, you have to collect a variety of foodstuffs which spawn randomly from one of the teleporters. A counter in top left corner tells you how many fruit you need to complete a level, whilst a superspot appears once every minute to give you temporary respite from the hunters.

Meanwhile, time mode is a test of endurance. Once again, the spots are absent, the counter replaced with a clock. You must evade the hunters until this timer ticks down to zero, once again aided by the occasional appearance of a superspot.

The final mode is endearingly titled 'Kill 'em All'. This time all the enemies start out in purple mode, your goal being to munch em all to death before the clock runs down. To make things a little more challenging, each pair of eyeballs can still respawn a fresh monster.

Rushman is a lot of fun to play, and the blend of different game modes provides excellent replay value. Easily the best of the bunch, this title could would have been worthy of a standalone release.

Ultimately, then, Arcade Park is a trinity of variable interest; the rather good Rushman standing head and shoulders above both of its siblings, despite the handicap of lacking a body.