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Most of the games released these days are of a pretty good standard. Unfortunately, Mayday is not one of these. It is no more than a souped-up lunar lander with different screens to land on.

A mothership passing along the top of the screen releases a landing module at your command. This drifts down the screen at a constant rate unless you slow it with your retro-rockets.

Left and right controls enable you to land on one of two areas, the smaller being more difficult but earning more points. On the way down you have to avoid horizontally moving asteroids, whose impact is lethal.

Having landed successfully, the module re-launches itself and you have to try and re-dock with the mothership. Only this time, as well as avoiding the asteroids, you also have to avoid alien ships and the bombs that they drop. You can shoot vertically to try and clear a path on your way up.

Control of the landing module is limited to left, right and reduced thrust on the descent, and only left and right on the ascent. This makes the interaction with the game rather limited, and leaves too much to chance.

The graphics are average but at least move smoothly. Sound effects are minimal.

The instruction sequence at the start typifies the below average quality of this game. When asked if the player wants instructions, pressing "Y" gives a full YES response, but then requires the carriage return key to be pressed to act on the entry. The instruction sequence itself has spelling mistakes, and is not particularly well-presented.

Shingo Sugiura