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Just when you thought the genre would collapse if another title was added to it, here's Dominator, the latest game in the "scrolling shoot-'em-up with extra weapons" mould. So, what makes Dominator stand out from the crowd? Well, not a lot, but it does show that extra touch of polish which a lot of similar games lack.

You start the game in the pilot's seat of a mothership, flying through a vertically-scrolling landscape of mushy, organic material with exudes tentacles in your direction. Luckily, your spaceship is a nippy old jalopy and the whole screen is available as dodging space, which is a bit of luck because there are a whole host of nasty beastlets roaming around the ether.

You won't be surprised to learn that your ship is equipped with a laser, which deals death in large quantities to any alien in your sights. There are no extra weapons to be found on the first level, because the programmers viewed it simply as a trigger finger warm-up exercise to prepare you for the main event. First, though, you have to deal with the end of level fatty, a superbly-drawn pulsating heart which has to be pumped full of photons before it explodes.

At this point you take control of your attack ship (which looks exactly the same as the mothership for some reason), the action turns through 90 degrees and you start on the long, horizontally-scrolling journey through the innards of a stonking great space dragon.

Level two takes a similar form to level one in terms of background graphics. Large, wobbly pink blobs predomite, making the first half of the level look like a thousand melted mutants hanging together by their tendrons. Blinking eyes and gaping maws also feature amongst the scenery, adding a further air of grotesqueness to the proceedings. Further on, your surroundings gradually transform into a honeycomb, and the squirmy microbes which assail your ship are replaced by swarms of ferocious bees.

Shooting a whole group of aliens sometimes leaves behind a glowing B icon which, when shot, adds one of eight bonus features to your ship. Extra weapons include rear guns, which fire two shots backwards at an angle, a forward-firing laser cannon, a missile launcher (which comes in a remote pod in the Amiga version), a rapid autofire with a limited lifespan and a smart bomb. The Amiga version also features speed-ups. Bonus ships and points are also available. The weapon selection is automatic, the computer alternating firearms bonuses with smart bombs and extra points or lives.

The end of the level is marked by a mucus-dripping mouth which spits globules of acidic slime at your ship. A bit of dodging and blasting and that's the end of him. Cue next level.

Level three continues in an oral vein, featuring hundreds of nasty incisors blocking the route, and quite a few diseased cavities spitting out plaque bombs. As you continue through this level, the ulcerous mouth graphics give way to spiky, metallic claws and you have to fight your way through squadrons of spinning plates (Haven't we seen those somewhere before?). The end of the level is inhabited by a large septic brain, which in turn is inhabited by a rather nasty maggot. Yeuch!

On level four, the transition from organic to mechanical is complete. The landscape is a metallic one with squadrons of robots flying around the place. The final confrontation, oddly enough, is with a large flog, with a sticky prehensile tongue which lashes out at your ship until you fry its brain with a few laser bolts.

At certain points in each level, the scrolling stops and you're faced with an intermediate monster, not as big as the end of level beasts but just as nasty. These take the form of giant bees, cyclops, octopods and alien foetuses, which weave about the screen hurling missiles in your direction, until you can loose off enough lucky shots to kill them.

Now, if this sort of gameplay sounds a mite familiar to you, your instincts serve you well. With the likes of Menace, Denaris, R-Type and Armalyte on the market, Dominator certainly is going to have its work cut out trying to carve a niche for itself.

But, even without originality on its side, Dominator still manages to impress. The addictive qualities of the action are on a par with the titles I've mentioned above, and while four levels may not sound like a lot, there is a lot of heavy-duty blasting to be done before you reach the end.

Graphically, Dominator is very good indeed, the sprites and backdrops being particularly impressive on the Spectrum version. The design of some of the uglier bits of scenery are distinctly reminiscent of certain recent horror films I've seen and blanched at.

The Amiga version's sound is a good as you could hope, with a funky title tune and some atmospheric in-game soundtracks. The programmers have included some strikingly good sampled sound effects, the best of which has to be the shrieking croak of the frog at the end of the fourth level, which increases in volume as you approach.

On the Spectrum at least, Dominator is one of the best shoot-'em-ups around, probably the best I've seen since R-Type. The Amiga version is up against stiffer competition, but it holds its own with the likes of Menace and Denaris.

Whichever format you own, if you're a hardened shoot-'em-up veteran, Dominator is a game to scour the shelves for.