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Greg Follis and Roy Carter of Tir Na Nog and Dun Darach fame (among many others), departed from their usual style in November 1986 to create the vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up, Lightforce.

This was the first release on the FTL (Faster Than Light) label and immediately amazed Spectrum owners with its amazingly colourful graphics. Fast-moving enemies zip around the screen, over a smoothly scrolling coloured background without a hint of colour clash - the second level, Jungle Planet, is particularly impressive.

Lightforce is pure mindless violence - the only deviation from blasting enemies is destroying the ground-level control centres to gain extra lives. Multi-coloured aliens swoop down in various attack waves and must either be shot or avoided. If your strangely-shaped ship manages to battle through to the end of a level, bonus points are calculated for the number of alien waves destroyed and an extra life is given if a preset number of control centres have been eliminated.

Although it eventually proves repetitive, Lightforce is still a highly playable blast-'em-up, well worth a look at the budget price.