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Join the forces of the Federation in this 3D space shoot-out, which puts you at the controls of their latest attack ship, the Magic Fly. Several of these vehicles form an elite police force patrolling the outer reaches of the Delta Hyrconis quadrant.

Your new orders request you and the rest of the squadron investigate a small planetoid suspected of being a command base for enemy fighters. Your objective is to find and destroy the base's communications centre, then scan a new enemy prototype fighter, and finally, find an Atomic Sledgehammer weapon and use it to deonate the enemy nuclear arsenal, thus destroying the whole place.

The mouse and the keyboard are used to pilot the ship through the tunnel network while avoiding obstacles and blast doors, and destroying enemy ships with one of ten weapons. Whilst all this is going on, you must also look out for docking bays, from which you can save your position, re-arm, re-fuel and communicate with other members of the squadron.

Enemy fire or contact with obstacles will deplete the ship's shields, and once these are gone, you can kiss your chips goodbye. Just remember, success in destroying the aliens will mean fame, fortune and promotion, whereas failure will get you a nice plastisteel coffin with your name on.

Hmm, this is a perplexing sort of game. From the look of things it should be a Starglider-type 3D blast, but it turns out to be a rather slow-paced, thinking man's shoot-'em-up.

It takes a while to get into Magic Fly, because there's not a whole lot to do for the first few minutes of playing apart from scanning enemy ships. Actually shooting anything is made difficult by the tiny blue target which is invisible when placed over an enemy ship, so it's certainly not a game that a real blast fan can get off on, and the various shape puzzles would be a real put-off for arcade fans.

There are some very impressive computer displays and the opening sequence is a doozy, but when it comes down to it, the gameplay's not going to have widespread appeal. Try before you buy.