Krypton Factor The Original

Liverpool fighting for the league, Kylie Minogue making headlines, a Scottish Doctor Who battling the Daleks of an evening, and people in Teletubby style jumpers attempting to land a plane in The Krypton Factor. That was the late 1980s for me and, apart from a few details, you could argue that little has changed as we creep into 2009.

The return of The Krypton Factor to our screens (albeit minus the legendary Gordon Burns, with the housewife-friendly Ben Shephard taking over instead) is just one in a string of '80s TV favourites making a comeback, and its reappearance has given the green light to this mobile imagining - although Gameloft has decided to honour classic Krypton, complete with a fossilised Burns, rather than the modern version.

This is no light interpretation, either. Though the games on offer differ from those of old in practice, the categories and the sheer length of the thing are entirely loyal to the original format.

Broken down into episodes, the game puts you in charge of a character (the name and look of which are at yours to define, though all of the girls randomly look a bit 'Page 3') in an opening heat.

You and three others then take part in six games that span your talents - Mental Agility, Response, Observation, Physical Ability, Intelligence and General Knowledge - with up to ten points being awarded for each one.

The top two players from each episode then go through to the next episode, where the same six categories are contested at a slightly tougher level.

And they need to be tougher, given that the opening encounters don't exactly stretch the brain cells. Early challenges focus on simple concepts - adding up or playing 'spot the ball under the cup' aren't exactly going to separate the wheat from the chaff, but they do give a fairly light introduction to Gameloft's take on The Krypton Factor's classic categories.

Indeed, some of the games remain the same throughout, with only your competition upping their game. The assault course is one such game, and is a case of hammering keys from beginning to end - '5' to dash over the straights, '2' to leap and '8' to crouch under netting.

The problem is, the connections between them are rather dodgy, meaning vital seconds can be lost standing on the spot switching between the two modes.

This certainly isn't an issue in the first couple of episodes, when your competitors have the pace of your local care home's relay team, but it's a factor that can prove to be the difference between sneaking a win and coming in at the back of the pack in later episodes, taking the edge off the contest as a whole.

It's the episodes formats, however, that really sell Krypton Factor The Original, with both the competition and the games themselves creeping upwards as each show passes.

Fairly simple maths problems are transformed into complicated equations comprising days and dates, while the flight simulator ends with a mode that charges you with flying through a whopping 24 hoops before landing at sea.

But it's often the mere control of the games, rather than the games themselves, that cause the most problems, with pre-play tutorials occasionally shedding very little light. This undermines what is otherwise an honourable effort to emulate a genuine television classic.

These faults aside, Krypton Factor The Original still manages to celebrate the consistency and determination all those winners of the old series conveyed, giving what could easily have been viewed as a trashy 80s cash-in just a little bit of dignity.

Not quite the 'full factor', then, but adding a sense of class to a decade so devoid of it is an achievement that Gordon Burns himself would have to tip his hat to.