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It's here! The classic shoot-'em-up from Ultimate is now available to soothe the itching fingers of trigger-happy Beeb owners.

There are 16 levels to the game, each with the same screen layout, but with different aliens to blast away at. You control a little figure who can either walk along the bottom of the screen or else take off with the aid of his jet-pack. The only other features of the screen are three small platforms suspended in space.

At the beginning of the game you must assemble your rocket from three component parts, fill it with fuel, and blast off to confront the next attack wave. Meteors zip in from either side, but you can dodge them, blast them, or take refuge in the top-right-hand corner if you need a rest.

As soon as you've got a full tank, you enter your rocket and take off for the next screen. On subsequent screens you simply refuel your rocket before moving on. Not an easy task, since those pesky aliens are constantly zooming, wriggling or bouncing in from side to side. You lose a life if you bump into an alien, but your laser has unlimited fire power.

Extra points are gained by picking up the occasional treasure as it falls from above. Objects are collected simply by passing over them. There's a two-player option and a sound-off control, which is lucky because the sound effects are pretty meaty.

My only reservation is that Jet Pac is now over a year old on the Spectrum, and no new features have been added to this latest version. In fact, I personally didn't think that the graphics were quite as good on the BBC as they were on the original. The sound, obviously, is a vast improvement.

Purists, however, will argue that the game is great as it is and, once that familiar display flashes onto the screen and the pace hots up, it's really rather hard to disagree.

Finally, Ultimate has started to extend the range of machines for which it produces games. Jet Pac, already a hit on the Vic 20 and Spectrum is, at last, available for the BBC. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a disappointment.

Instead of the slick, clear graphics on the Spectrum game, this has slightly blurred characters with wishy-washy colours. One consolation is the sound which is suitably noisy and spectacular. Like I said, a disappointment.

The nice thing about Jet Pac has always been its constructive element. Of course, you've got your mass slaughter - but you also have to assemble the rocket. It's a bit like playing Lego with one hand and strangling the cat with the other.

This BBC conversion is in my opinion as playable and compulsive as the Spectrum original.

The graphics and the animation were disappointing, the sound was adequate and the title screen could have been vastly superior. But these niggles do not detract from what is an exceptionally addictive and classy shoot-'em-up.