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Your people, constantly under attack from hordes of evil war robots, created by planet-sized corporations intent on interstellar domination, have developed the Alpharay ship. It is hoped this ship, piloted by you, can destroy the threat to your people. In this sidescrolling shooter, the future is in your hands.

Bauknecht group (BKN) comprises Stefan (Mad), D. András (bubis), KiCHY, Nero and Starbuck. They are a very talented team of coders, graphic artists and musicians who have been creating astonishing games and demos for Commodore machines.

Alpharay is their latest and greatest game. It is of such a high standard that it has been snapped up for commercial release by Psytronik Software. It should be available on tape (£6.99), disk (£13.99) and cartridge (£39.99) by the time you read this.

On the title screen you are given the option of selecting the game's difficulty level from Apprentice (infinite lives), Normal (default), Hard or Ultra difficulty. The other option is to start the game.

You are then shown detailed pictures of an evil war robot, your ship and the pilots, along with the plot of the game. After this you are instructed, in Neo Geo arcade style, how to control your Alpharay and a couple of the weapons at your disposal: triple shot and beam blast. You can use joystick or keyboard to move your ship and fire. You use the space bar to select your ship's current weapon.

Each level represents a different corporation who needs to be taught a lesson via your blasting skills. For example, the first level is an omikron space station. The second level is a syntex robot manufacturing base. Levels are introduced with a bit of background about the corporation you are battling against. They even have their own logo. It's a nice touch that builds up the atmosphere of the game.

It quickly becomes apparent that this is not just some mindless, pointless, shoot 'em up. The diversity of background effects and enemies is a delight to behold. Enemies all have their own recognisable patterns, quirks and personalities. There's something new to see in several sections of each level. They give the game that addictive "one more go" quality that'll have you playing it constantly for weeks and maybe even months on end. The number of different weapon power-ups and their strengths is also extremely impressive and well balanced.

At no point in the game did I find losing all my power-ups when dying meant that from that point on the game was nigh on impossible which is something a lot of shoot 'em ups seem to suffer from. I did find the title music a bit average on the ears, a half decent tune but nothing spectacular. However, the in-game music was extremely catchy and synced perfectly with the blasting action.

The graphics varied from level to level based on the pre-level introduction and most of the numerous enemy sprites are well drawn and different enough to be instantly recognisable. There is quite a cleverly designed big boss at the end of the first level where pattern recognition and reactions were required. It died with a suitably satisfying prolonged explosion. In fact, the spot effects throughout the game are all very well done.

The variety of graphics used for the game's scenery, enemies and weapons are simply amazing. The story and introductions for each level creates a dramatic atmosphere behind your gameplay. Explosions light up the screen. It's such a visual delight along with the glorious use of colour. Firepower blasting out of your spaceship makes this game feel like it's being played on a real arcade machine

Checkpoints for restarts after death were a bit unforgiving, sometimes taking you way back from where you died. The status bar at the bottom of the screen is extremely small and sometimes this makes it difficult to actually see what it's showing.

This game has pretty much everything you would expect from a decent side-scrolling shooter including that elusive "just one more go" quality that plenty of games of this type are sadly lacking. This oozes pure quality and so much shoot 'em up fun it would be in with a shout of top 5 shooters on almost any system, even those machines more powerful than the Plus/4. Graphically exceptional with so much playability and space blow 'em up action