SPACE INVADERS (Playstation/PC, Activision)

God knows what the maniac who reviewed this (5 stars) a couple of months ago was on – this is the dullest game in the world, containing none of the charm or atmosphere of the original Space Invaders and none of the impressive fancy stuff of today’s gaming, for the worst of both worlds. You’ll finish it first go in less than an hour and never play it again. The eight-year-old Super Space Invaders ‘91 is a million times better than this toss.

ORIGINAL GAME INCLUDED? Yes, as a "bonus" after completing the new one, but it’s the crappiest version of all time, only adding insult to injury.

GAUNTLET LEGENDS (N64, Midway)

Now this is much better. In fact, it’s almost like the characters from the original Gauntlet were taken out and dropped into a bunch of Tomb Raider levels, only with a decent control system. Playing very much like the old games (run around collecting keys, potions and treasure and hacking your way through huge mobs of ugly baddies), Gauntlet Legends doesn’t actually add much to the formula except for the fancy 3D environment, which means it eventually gets a bit repetitive in one-player mode and is much more fun with four. But it’s great for a half-hour pick-up-and-play session in between more "sophisticated" games.

ORIGINAL GAME INCLUDED? No. But there’s hardly any need.

CENTIPEDE (Playstation/PC, Hasbro)

Centipede, on the other hand, *thinks* it’s just copying the old game and adding a load of sexy 3D graphics, but it’s wrong on both counts. Firstly, the new "plot" means you have to defend lots of little guys scattered all over the place instead of just yourself, which totally changes the game from a panicky defensive battle to a much less intense search-and-destroy mission, and secondly the graphics are so blocky and jerky that even if you don’t get motion sickness after the first five minutes, you’ll have absolutely no idea where anything is or which way you’re facing, and you’ll just have to hope that you blunder into a centipede or two from sheer luck to relieve the boredom.

ORIGINAL GAME? Yes, a fine version playable from the start.

PAPERBOY 64 (Nintendo 64, Midway)

Atari’s Paperboy was one of the most inventive games of its day (1984), but this version loses the sharp, and clean-cut world of the original in favour of a weird, gloomy, surreal collection of levels where you spend more time wandering around what’s going on (and what the hell kind of scary freaks live in these places) than actually delivering papers. It’s all so vague, easy and mildly unsettling that you’ll swiftly find yourself hankering nostalgically for your real paper round, as it was probably more challenging and more fun.

ORIGINAL GAME? No.

MISSILE COMMAND (Playstation, Hasbro)

Missile Command takes a very similar approach to Paperboy – keep the original gameplay more or less intact, but put it in a much bigger, spread-out area (as with Centipede) that takes all the gameplay focus and visual excitement out of it. In the new MC, your missile bases are pointlessly airborne, in order to enable you to locate all the missiles which are more often than not crawling down the edges of the screen where you can hardly notice them. In the original, frantically fighting off the terrifying, overpowering, white-knuckle blizzard of incoming missiles was the problem. Here, it’s finding the damn things. Hypnotic, in the sense that it’ll make you go to sleep.

ORIGINAL GAME? Sort of – you get an original-gameplay version with all-new graphics, playable from the start.

Q*BERT (Playstation, Hasbro)

Foul-mouthed spring-heeled bignose Q*Bert is one of gaming’s most-loved old stagers, but it’s more for his stroppy attitude than for any of his games. This clever updating probably won’t change that, which is a shame because the designers have homed in on all the things that were good about the original (the odd Escher-ish perspective, the characterful baddies and the constant pressure) and really focussed this new version on them. After the first couple of easy levels you’re constantly being attacked from all sides at once as you bounce along painting precarious platforms in space, and the game’s been balanced perfectly to keep you playing as it gets harder. A lovely job, identifiably the same game as old Q*Bert, only much better..

ORIGINAL GAME? You get both the original and a spruced-up version of it to play from the off, as well as the all-new modern game.

PAC-MAN WORLD (Playstation, Namco)

This is the least like the original of any of the games here – it’s actually a side-on platformer that plays more like Namco’s obscure Klonoa from last year than anything else. Still, it’s an excellent game in its own right, and there are lots of traditional Pacman-style maze sub-games, so that’s okay, then. Probably.

ORIGINAL GAME? Yes, a not-bad freely-playable version taken from the Namco Museum compilation.

PONG (Playstation, Hasbro)

You wouldn’t think there’d be a lot you could do with Pong, given that the original consisted of nothing but two bats and a ball, but if you thought that you’d be wronger than anyone’s ever been about anything. This is a work of genius that takes the basic formula of Pong and twists it into dozens of freaky new shapes encompassing everything from fly-fishing to sheep-herding. It’s totally mental with four players, but still completely spanking on your own, and not only is it the best game here by a mile, it’s also probably the best Playstation game of the last 12 months.