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What is it with beautiful Princesses? They're always getting themselves kidnapped aren't they? And then some poor old hero has to risk his neck going to her rescue. Well, guess that's happened in Mastertronic's latest 16-bit budget title. A Princess has been abducted and a hero is required to save her bacon. And that hero is you, and the Princess in question is Chardonnay.

The game is set a few millenia in the future, so intead of going out to rescue her on a trusty steed, the hero thunders off in a fab 'n groovy rocket ship. The evil swines who're currently holding the Princess captive are the Disgusmatrons, and they have all sorts of horrible and nasty things to do to her... So you'd better get your skates on, buddy!

The mission of mercy isn't a straightforward nip in, nip out affair, and involves negotiating the deadly Disgusmatrons' defence devices. There are four basic hazards to get through, before reaching the second wave of defences, which are even tougher.

First up is a chase through a densely-packed asteroid field. The action is viewed in vector graphic 3D, and the objective is to whizz through the boulder-strewn spaceways and blast five Disgustmatron spaceships. These blue craft appear one at a time and are simply blown away with one well-aimed blast of laser fire.

After that comes a leisurely scoot across a planet surface. The idea is to guide the ship through a series of gates, which sounds easy enough, but unfortunately the ship's speed can't be regulated and sometimes it's impossible to fly left or right far enough to get through the next gate. Like the last level, hitting anything results in the loss of one of the ship's ten shields.

The third level is a hyperspace jump, where the hero flies through a long tunnel made up of squares. Fly through the squares and everything is Ok. Fly outside and it's curtains!

Finally, the ship zooms down a tunnel, avoiding oncoming obstacles and blasting Dishusmatron ships. When five have been totalled, the game returns to the first level, only it's harder.

In principle, Chase sounds like it might be quite a neat little budget game, but unfortunately it's backing in many areas. The four levels are very simplistic, and annoying quirks like the lack of a speed control on level two and Disgusmatron ships that seem to be flying outside the tunnel on the last level are very annoying.

The gameplay is limited, and once you've been round the levels, it all gets boring. The vector graphics are smooth and fast, and the 3D update convincing, especially in the tunnel sequence, but in the end they're wasted on what's an ultimately shallow and tedious game.