Jambo! Safari

There is a straightforward Arcade mode but it's very basic. To kick it off you boot up Story mode as normal, then capture any old animal at random. This will start a countdown clock ticking and you must capture another animal before it hits zero. The idea is you keep chaining captures until you have trapped eight different species.

This is actually quite hard - not because the roping is difficult, as discussed, but because it can be tricky to locate all eight animals within the time limit. You have to use your pointer to identify what animals are from a distance, otherwise the poor visuals mean you end up racing over to a lion only to discover it's a zebra. Arcade mode is indeed closer to the original arcade experience than all the mission-based nonsense, and it's rather good fun.

It's even more fun if you're playing co-operatively. Unlike the arcade game, Jambo! Safari for Wii has a multiplayer mode. (Although the arcade game did, in fact, have an unofficial multiplayer mode - one of you drove the jeep and captured the animals while the other one shouted "No he's gone left, I said LEFT, go on, get him, ****ING COME ON, KILL IT KILL IT AAAAAAAAA" etc.)

At any time another player can drop in and control the rope and lasso while you drive the jeep. This is easier than trying to steer, spot animals and capture them all on your own and the co-op mechanic works well. The other advantage is you're unlikely to get thrown out of your lounge for bad language by a red-faced manager who wishes they'd just replace all the arcade machines with fruities.

Once you've exhausted the possibilities of co-op there are the party games to "enjoy", all of which require a minimum of two players and can be played by a maximum of four. The lowlight of these is Ostrich Racing. Shaking the remote backwards and forwards is supposed to make your bird run round the track, but the game tends to think you're trying to make it jump all the time so it's more like a series of hops. Frustrating, exhausting and not worth playing more than once.

Next up is Jam Ball. The first time we selected this, the game crashed so badly that both the reset and power buttons ceased to function and I had to pull the plug. Following a successful reboot we discovered it involves each player driving a jeep around a circular arena, trying to knock a gigantic football into a single goal. It's simplistic, shoddy and extremely stupid, and the kind of thing you would play for a solid four hours if you were eight years old or eight pints in.