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Bit of a weird title, this. I was expecting cavemen and dinosaurs and Doug McLure (you already mentioned the dinosaurs - yak). But no, there isn't a fossil in sight. All shiny surfaces and mysterious high-tech aliens. Yes, indeed, this is more like the US Gold we know and love (hem hem).

No messing about waiting to get started here. No thankyou, you're straight into the action, armed with the biggest laser rifle available in Halfords and a pair of sunglasses and haircut to put even the most trendy space-marine to shame. There's a backpack too, to keep you in the sky - the ground is no safe place any more and the aliens will corner you if possible, so it's of paramount importance that you keep moving.

The first wave of bad guys isn't too bad. Straight-forward attack waves coming from different vertical positions straight across the screen.

Just line up and keep firing. As soon as you decide to shifty position, though, you'll have to get to grips with the slightly wacky control options. While the direction keys carry out their normal function, moving while depressing the fire button ()oh, I'm so depressed will swing the gun, clockwise or anti - around your body. The screenshots should show you what I mean. Until you remember to let go of the fire button, which is a bit tough in a white-knuckle-everyone-must-die situation, or you become precise enough with the gun-sweep to judge exactly when to stop moving while still leaving the gun pointing in sensible direction, you'll find the aliens continually crashing into you while your equipment is facing the other way. Eyurk.

As well as the usual hazards of flying aliens and other generally predictable confrontations, you'll have to watch the scenery all the time. Huge Gigeresque pillars lurch out of the cavern wall at you, and horrid mechanical cog things grind away at you. Very Metropolis.

Attribute collision has been thrown to the wind and there's no problems distinguishing who the bad guys are. Everybody is a bad guy, and they all deserve to die ha HAAAA!

Pretty soon you'll have had about as much fun as there is to be had shooting aliens with a single-shot rocket. Time to TOOL UP!

As if by magic, a shop slowly rises out of the ground, luring you in with its glowing "Shop" sign. Quickly you've got to dive down and go in. You'll be presented with icons offering different weapon configs. You know, four-way fire/lasers etc. You can't just get the weapons for nothing, of course, so it's a good job whenever you blew away a bad guy on the way you collected the glowing blue globule that he left behind. Tokens. The more you collect, the fabber the weapon you're entitled to.

I like Forgotten Worlds. I like it stacks. There's lots to kill, lots of colour and even big end-of-level baddies to combat. There are also really weird bits when aliens that look like pieces from geometry - compasses, protractors and the like, perform a nightmarish dance about the screen. They're all as deadly as hell and need about five shots to defeat. Once you've taken out the end-of-level bad guy; each being a minor set-piece, you progress to the next, tougher stage.

Graphically it's super, and there's no danger of things slowing down even when there's loads going on. A corker!

Fab space shoot-out. Death and colour and a big gun. Phooor.