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The aliens have taken over your anti-matter conversion plant after a surprise attack and are threatening to detonate it, turning it into a black hole unless you offer unconditional surrender. As you don't fancy that particular idea much either, it is decided to infiltrate the plant and disable it before "critical mass" is achieved.

You are dropped well to the west of the plant in your craft, a rocket-propelled hover type, and must head east with all due speed, taking care to avoid the many rocks and blasting away at the aliens' defensive crafts. Should your craft implode due to your hitting too many rocks etc you have a chance to use your jetpack and fly back to base to pick up another craft, avoiding the hungry sand worms en route. Once you reach the plant, you have to follow a precise attack procedure if you are to destroy it.

Your craft is highly responsive to the joystick. So much so, that I would recommend using the keyboard, at least at first. This may seem surprising as the only controls are rotate left and right, accelerate, brake and fire. The problem comes with accelerate. Is is very easy to reach top speed and then find that your craft is too fast for you to handle and you are bouncing round the rocks like a ball bounces off the bumpers on a pin-table. This ham-fisted approach also leads to complaints when you crash and can't find your craft in time. Slowly you learn to take things gentler and accelerate in small bursts rather than just pushing the joystick forward and holding it there.

The information on the screen is discretely placed in the bottom left hand corner giving details of time to critical mass, energy left, distance to next zone and score. There are five different skill levels and you can change the type of vehicle to make control of the craft even more difficult.

The graphics look good with smooth scrolling and the game plays as well as it looks. If you can overcome any initial frustration, it will keep you quiet for hours.