I'm sure that if I hear the Star Wars theme played once more on a piece of alien zapping software, I will scream! Not a bad implementation here, however, and a neat idea the game offers is the option to centre the screen display with the cursor keys whilst the main program is loading.

Originality stops there, I'm afraid. Despite a kind of cute parable offered as the background to the game (aliens have landed whilst we've been busy playing Invaders and they have stolen all of our formulae), I'm forced to admit that I could hardly bear to play this - and hopefully I'm getting paid to do so!

Your MFB (Manoeuverable Flying Base) snails its way across the low horizon whilst an assortment of pathetically slow-moving aliens cross the sky at various heights. Some fun, huh? Well, what makes it almost unbearably awful is that these aliens can only manage to appear one at a time, thus allowing you to answer the phone or make a cup of coffee or whatever and still shoot the "mutant" down.

However, this isn't a version of Invaders, despite the promise of the cassette cover and the background documentation. The whole pointless exercise is just an excuse to offer you a simple equation to solve - addition, subtraction, multiplication or division depending on which mega scenario you choose. Despite the presence of a hi-score table and three lives (you lose if you should miss the alien - ha! - or fail to solve the equation - double ha!).

Now it may be that you need a little bit of fun to sweeten the pill of a basic teach 'em game and on that basis I suppose this is as good and as bad as half a dozen others, but it does seem a mite sneaky to try and package it as a shoot 'em up.

If you're into aliens you might well pick this up and be more than a touch annoyed, especially as the fun elements are so incredibly dull; if you're a teacher or parent looking for a simple maths aid for your kids then you'll probably never even pick this up. Come to think of it, that is almost certainly the best possible thing that could happen to you.

D.R.