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It's not often that the object of an Invaders-style game is actually to avoid shooting the descending menaces. Birdstrike is the exception to the rule, a WW1 themed game set "somewhere in Europe in 1914". In it, numerous planes flutter from the top to the bottom of the screen and the object of the game is to do anything other than score a direct hit on them. If you do, they explode in a rather satisfying mishmash of pixels but they also rob you of your chance of 'winging' them (shooting them in the wings). Each successful hit to the wing unleashes a chirpy noise from the Electron and a pigeon comes smoothly flapping across the screen. The pigeon is the actual target; the trouble is that by the time it appears you've got to somehow get out from under the enemy and fill it full of lead before it flaps off again.

And escaping from the planes in Birdstrike isn't easy - these mothers home-in on you, rocking side-to-side in an effort to keep you forever in their line of sight. It's quite a smart move on their parts too, firstly because when they're between you and a flying pigeon they will 'stop' your bullets reaching it. And secondly, because the menacing rock-back-and-forth motion imbues you with a sense of panic. Quite often you'll find yourself instinctively rocking either left or right to just get out of their way; unfortunately such an action is completely pointless as they can match your speed. Once they are above you, you move left and they'll move left too. The actual skill of the game is to fight your instincts and leave your gun turret stationary. Do that and the locked-on plane will drift away from you instead, and you might just be able to put enough pixels between the pair of you that you'll live another day.

Hit a pigeon and it changes into an arrow pointing upwards to the musical stave that sits top centre of the screen. One more dead bird equals one additional note and the aim of the game is to complete each stave without having destroyed all the planes, whereupon you get a riff from "They were only playing leapfrog" and proceed to the next sheet. The planes change with each sheet although they don't seem to get any tougher and still stick rigidly to the same attack pattern. Only one plane attacks at a time, and as long as it doesn't collide with you, it floats off the bottom of the screen and re-appears at the top. Planes drop bombs too, which travel down the screen vertically and play havoc with your pigeon-shooting strategy.

Your bullets move quickly up the screen when fired and often you need to perfect the art of shooting into the space where gravity predicts that the plane will wind up rather than directly at the plane's wing. This aiming at the plane's wing is an acquired skill, but even the most carefully placed shot can often see a bullet wiping out the plane when you didn't intend it to. If you wipe out all six planes, the stave is cleared and you proceed to the next sheet with no wartime music accompaniment.

Birdstrike isn't a very ambitious game. As you've probably gleaned, in many respects it's a variant of Space Invaders, albeit one where the invaders peel off from the pack and dart left and right showering the laser base below with bombs. The whole 'winging' element, however, gives it a very different feel because, when a plane explodes, it's not actually a cause for celebration. The graphics are small and functional but they nevertheless manage to convey the whole wartime feel of the game quite well. The church graveyard, which slowly fills with gravestones as the carnage continues, is a nice touch.

The game is very responsive, reacting instantly to a change of direction or the loosing off of your weapon, and you do quickly develop a sixth sense for what the descending enemy planes will probably do next. With experience you can get further into the game, encountering all the different styles of plane (there are four in all) and, hopefully, hearing the whole of "They Were Only Playing Leapfrog" every once in a while. There's a high score table but no ability to increase or decrease the enemy AI so the game does quickly become repetitive. There's nothing really wrong with it otherwise. You even get a nice musical riff of Colonel Bogey each time you get ready to play.

Overall, an enjoyable way of wasting away time until you've seen all the planes and you get bored. Birdstrike was released by Firebird, whose catalogue of Electron games was quite small, and almost every Electron owner in the Eighties had it in his collection. Quite possibly this was because it only cost £1.99 and was the type of impulse purchase computer game that most children could persuade mum and dad to pop in the trolley during the big shop on Saturday morning. The original version was quite unusual for the time in another respect... the cover art consisted of a screenshot of the game in action.

The game was also re-released on Firebird's budget range towards the end of the Eighties with an illustrated, cartoon-style cover. However, this version is much more difficult to find. That being said, there doesn't seem to be any great price disparity between each release, probably due to the perceived ease with which Birdstrike can be collected. So if you fancy a good, timeless blast on this on the original machine, expect to pay about £1-£2.