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A couple of years ago (when my Beeb was still a figment of the postman's imagination!), I started to daydream of a computer game where you could fly a mission in space by being launched from a space station, fly around attacking three dimensional nasties and then fly abck to dock with the mothership again. Later that same year, Buck Rogers started doing just that and now A&F has gone a long way towards providing my original dream at the comfort of my own keyboard.

To play, you launch from your mothership into space, the blackness of which is interrupted only by the distant galaxies and the occasional advertisement for A&F. Almost immediately, aliens start attacking, zooming in larger and larger and firing at you. Your own bolts may be discharged by pressing the space bar - A, Z, <, > and *, ?, Z, X control options are provided, plus joysticks - and, if on target, the ship disappears in a cloud of space debris. If you eventually hit a sector of space where there are no meanies around to take shots at you, your long range scanner, immediately above your cockpit view, can be used to search for others. If you destroy everything in the current attack wave, you have to search out your mothership and redock to replenish fuel and shield energy.

There are two types of alien on the first wave, rising by four by wave three, and they all grow more numerous and move aggressive as you progress. One type even spawns another, so that the enemy may replenish its forces during an attack.

You may refuel during an attack wave (and at the higher levels you will be forced to), but all the alien's venom will then be concentrated on your mothership. Loss of all shield energy (or destroying your own mothership) signals the end of the game.

Cylon Attack is as good a space game as you're going to get on the BBC Micro at the current state of play.

Simon Williams