Do you ever dream living like our Stone Age ancestors did, free from the hassles of modern life - no Darling Buds of May, and even better, no Neighbours? Well, now you can trade the hassle of the motorway for the menace of prehistoric jungle in Titus' latest creation.

You play the caveman Prehistorik and your main object is to gather enough food to take you to the next level in this horizontally scrolling platform game. Armed with the lethal combination of a club and a bit of intelligence, the idea is to whack animals on the head, walk on them and then add them to your larder.

This quest for food takes you through the caverns of an unknown continent, Antartica, and a tropical rainforest. As usual, at the end of each level there is a guardian to be removed.

However, of course it's not as simple as this. Touching the animals means the loss of precious energy and the more lethal of them can throw things at you or even breathe fireballs.

Another way that energy is lost is by walking into obstacles, and lives are lost by falling into holes or water. If the level is not completed in time, then you lose a life.

The other place to get food is in the caves or under ponds. Here the food is well defended but help is at hand because the caves contain things that are useful to you. There are clocks that add to your time, shields, axes to knock out the baddies quickly, bombs, crosses that add an extra life, and a spring to make you jump higher.

These little devices can be picked up by cracking your medidating guru friend on the head and taking what's left behind. He comes and goes at will so catch him if you can.

Unusual touches are the trampolines that help you to jump higher, and best of all, the balloons which let you control the main character as he floats through the air.

This is one of the best games produced by Titus. It has simple, non nonsense gameplay and brilliant, melt-your-heart graphics. Even the baddies look cute - occasionally, you might find yourself sympathising with them when they "buy it"!

Since the dawn of time man has faced a continuous struggle to survive. The most important requirements for a healthy and happy life being warmth and food. The former was solved with the advent of the loin-cloth, but getting enough grub is a never-ending problem.

Prehistorik is a caveman and he is constantly on the look out for food to appease his huge appetite. He's always hungry, and besides he must consume a certain amount of food to make it off the end of the level.

Dead meat
There's plenty of nosh lying around for the taking, usually scattered around I caves. Other edibles are on legs, though, and they need to be killed before they can be killed before they can be eaten.

You're armed with a club with which to bash this fast food on the head with. The number of hits required to render the walking lunch unconscious depends on the monster, but once he's dazed you can tuck in.
Naturally, these dinosaurs don't take too kindly to being eaten every five minutes, and should you get to your bloke without being biffed, they will expend your energy by a unit. Should it reach zero then yer dead.

There are other life-threatening hazards. Small fires and spikes need to be carefully jumped over. Some creatures spit fire or throw things at you. Life just wasn't safe one million years ago.

Pretty ancient
The graphics in Prehistorik are brilliant! The monsters are mega-cute and the animation comical. When fire is pressed the character goes into a clubbing frenzy, leaping up and down on the spot like a thing possessed. The sound too is good, the intro tune being a sort of Stone Age house-music track.

The only thing that lets the game visually is the scrolling - or lack of it. For this sort of game, though, scrolling is a must - however, the action is broken up by the crude push-scrolling that occurs when the edge of the screen is met.

Nothing to it
Actually, the gameplay itself is pretty dull. There's very little to it - just wander along, bop the beasties, and wander along some more. There are no real puzzles to speak of, except for timing perhaps, and even those aren't particularly taxing. The monsters are easy to beat - just keep fire pressed when they're in range and you can't miss them. Even the end-of-level guardians are a cinch.

Despite being a good looker, there isn't really an awful lot to Prehistorik. After the first few experimental steps, the game is really easy, and worse than that, it's boring too.

It's a bit odd to find myself reviewing this just now, because there's a demo on this month's cover mounted disk allowing you to see it and decide just how good it is (or isn't) on your own. Still, it's my opinion you want here so it's my opinion you shall have, and actually, I think it's rather good. Not as good as the excellent (and similarly themed Toki or Chuck Rock admittedly, but a fun and likeable platform romp nonetheless.

So what's it all about? Well, you play Prehistorik, a very hungry caveman. This isn't any sort of elaborate rescue mission on your on, as it is in the games just mentioned, but simply a quest for food - if you've ever wondered how the dinosaurs died out, it's not because of the ice age or a meteorite fall or anything fancy like that, but simply because Prehistorik ate them all!

You see, he's only allowed off a level if he manages to club unconscious and then walk over (and so nosh) 99.9 per cent of all dinos/grizzly bears/unnameable prehistoric thingies he comes across. I think the game's a bit too strict with this - it would be better if you were allowed to ignore more of the creatures if you wanted, and still get off the level - but it's not too big a fault.

As it stands though, it can get annoying (and repetitive), especially when you find you've got to trek all the way back to somewhere near the start of the level (if the landscape lets you that is) to trough a few last monsters to fill you up.

Levels are your standard platform and ladders sort of thing - in fact, the whole thing has something of the feel of a Super Mario game, though without the depth of finely tuned gameplay. The creatures are undeniably cute (the little bears still wag their tails when unconscious, for instance) and the standard world designs (an ice world with penguins, and so on, a jungle one with monkeys and the like) are well done.

Unusually, between the proper levels comes a sort of boxing match affair (quite what the explanation for this is, I don't know) where Prehistorik has to take on some giant dino, caveman or whatever while battling a never-ending procession of smaller versions off the screen. Reasonably cute and fun, but slight and likely to become a bit of a pain after a while, you could say.

Other faults? Well, the game only scrolls on a screen when you get right to the edge of it, which seems unnecessary (apparently a hang-over of the original version being done in ST STOS) and the wait while it reloads the levels and so on can be a bit of a pain.

You could also argue that the whole thing gets a bit samey after a while too - more hectic platform-leaping action and less of this rather repetitive bonking-dinosaurs-on-the-head-and-then-tucking-in-stuff would have been nice - but basically it's a pretty, appealing and actually rather lovable little romp which only suffers a bit because its two most obvious rivals are so good, not because of any real faults in the game itself.

Casting a covetous eye at the worldwide success of Nintendo's Mario series of games, Gallic softcos, Titus, have invented their own cartoon character to star in a platform-packed romp.

For their inspiration, Titus have travelled back to the Dinosaur Age. Prehistorik is both the name of this flick-screen platform extravaganza and that of the game's star, a sort of Primordial Danny De Vito if you like!

The game begins with the Prehistorik asleep in his tree-top hideout, dreaming of a huge plateful of Bronto-burgers and chips. Awoken by his grumbling tum, the titular tribesman decides to head off into the Prehistoric jungle for a bite to eat.

Wearing a yellow-and-black polkadot lioncloth, our carnivorous caveman has to travel through four platform-packed levels in his search for a meaty meal.

Prehistorik has to bash his way past an army of dinosaurs, grizzly bears, sickeningly-cute penguins, flying bats and Pterodactyls (which look more like parrots, to be honest). Each opponent is taken out by clubbing them their bonces to help till your tum with grub.

Prehistorik's journey takes him through a rain forest, the icy waters and slippery mountain slopes of an arctic waste and an underground complex of lava pools and volcanic eruptions. Coincedently, each of thes scenarios also make an appearance in Core's recent Prehistoric bashabout, Chuck Rock.

There's even a certain amount of graphic similarity between the two ranging from the cute 'n' cuddly dinosaurs and coconut throwing monkeys through to the use of bold primary colours.

Where Prehistorik scores over its rival is the many bonus caves scattered throughout each level where hordes of extra food, extra lives and various helpful loot can be plundered.

There are also three extra levels which involve a knockabout with a charging rhino, a big mama of a dino and her army of young siblings, and a gigiantic caveman. Set in a hige boxing ring, Prehistorik has to repeatedly club his opponents until they submit.

Unfortunately, the difficulty level has been set way too high making them almost impossible to complete.

Although each stage has a number of new creatures to thump, many reappear from previous levels which smacks of creative redundancy.

The gameplay is thus somewhat repetitive, with no real challenges or puzzles to solve, and it's also incredibly slow. This can be frustrating, and lacks the on-screen action that graced Chuck Rock. Despite picking up a clutch of awards on the Continent, it fails to impress.