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Gosh! The galaxy has been infested with great big fluffy birds, flying eggs and giant motherships, space chickens and cosmic starlings! What could be worse?

Who is brave enough to fly a poor, harmless little plutonium death bomber against the fiendish evil of the twisted star sparrows?

You can! Even though you quiver at the mere thought of fighting robins and budgies, you strap on your special space-fighter boots and head for the nearest weapons shop.

You kit out your ship with the biggest, juiciest, most unnecessarily dangerous photon cannon you can find and head for the most dangerous corner of the universe.

Birds may not sound like the most horrifying of foes, but these ones are armed. They also have the distressing habit of dive-bombing, kamikaze-style, onto your unsuspecting bonce. A couple of you older readers may be getting a sense of deja-vu about now and with good reason.

Yes, it's all uncannily similar to the ancient coin-op Pheonix. The game runs in much the same style as Galaxians, only with a little more variety. The game involves you controlling a fat little spaceship, confined to the bottom of the screen. You can move left and right, but not up or down.

Birds swoop down from their formations, occasionally firing lasers. Some formations start off as eggs, which split to reveal fairly hefty birds. These have wings which can be shot, but to destroy them you have to hit dead centre. The wings regenerate quickly and make them difficult targets.

Shooting the eggs is the best bet, annihilate them before they are born. This may sound a bit harsh, but it's the only way to deal with our fine feathered fiends.

So you destroy a wave of birds with your big laser. That's how hard you are, but are you ready for the biggest, nastiest chicken you have ever seen in a video game? The Megaphoenix?!

This massive space horror swoops and drops its own eggs on you. These split when they hit the 'ground', so watch out for flying fragments. Destroy it by shooting it right on the nose (or rather the beak).

When you have totalled the big goon, it will drop a power-up capsule. This should turn your laser into a fat nuclear accelerator. Just the job for toasting little fluffy duckies. You'll need it thought, because the next section is quite tricky.

Oh dear. You do all that. Now you have to do it all again. When you destroy the Megaphoenix again, your firepower increases, with double lasers this time.

Megaphoenix becomes very easy indeed and very quickly. Even if you are completely duff, the game is deathly dull and completely repetitive. Nice graphics, dire game.

Megaphoenix is based on the archaic arcade machine Phoenix, itself not exactly bursting with gameplay. Megaphoenix offers little in the name of originality. What a pile of bird doos!

Reach level five.

Graphics 78%
Attractive and colourful, but still very simple.

Sonics 78%
Good tune and very nice sound effects.

Grab Factor 70%
Instantly playable - just pick up the stick and destroy!

Staying Power 40%
Oh my gosh! This is so repetitive you won't believe it.

Overall 42%
Ten quid for five minutes of pleasure? It's up to you...