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Hey, there's something wrong here! This game isn't a coin-op conversion. It doesn't feature characters from a TV cartoon. It doesn't feature characters to do with a new film. Some mistake surely?!

Tell you what though, it is a cracking mixture of action and strategy and features some of the most stunning 3D I've ever seen on the Spectrum.

Peter Cooke can be relied upon to produce original and challenging games and he's done it again with Micronaut One - set inside a massive Biocomputer riddled with enough pests to keep Rentokill in business for at least a couple of light years.

Play the game and you become a member of the Guild of Equalisers, formed to protect the asteroid based biocomputers from infestation.

As with all systems, the biocomputer has predators, the Scrim, a mutated descendant of the fruit fry, Drosophilia.

The Scrim live in the Tunnels, feeding on free energy and thriving on the warm and damp environment. As part of their work Guild must keep the tunnels clear of Scrim eggs and webs.

The Scrim has a three stage life-cycle in the tunnels. Eggs are laid by adult Scrim. They are very strong and usually impervious to the Guild's weapons.

The eggs grow very quickly in the energy rich tunnels and continue to feed until they split and form the fully adult Jellyfly.

Jellyflyers are fast-moving and will search for a section of tunnel to build an energy web and lay their eggs to begin one lifecycle all over again.

The objectives of the game is to rid the tunnels of any Scrim while maintaining the energy.

When all the Scrim have been eliminated in a tunnel complex the Guild will transfer you to a more unstable and heavily infested area.

To begin life as a Guild member, move the arrow to the Play option on the main menu and press fire. The screen will clear and a new set of options will appear, the game menu. You'll see View, Map, E.T.U., Info, Pad and Misc. options at the top of the screen.

Select the View option. The top of the screen, the viewscreen, will show you view of the tunnels. Now left, right, up and down will move your ship about through the tunnels and fire will fire the ship's weapons. In addition the keys Q and W allow you to move up and down in the tunnel to avoid obstacles.

Below the viewscreen as the ship's instruments. A small rectangular window, the scanner shows the tunnel section that you are in, the direction that you are facing, the time and whether your weapons are targetted.

Below the scanner are three bars. The first shows the ship's speed, the second the ship's energy level and the third is a message window for information about the Biocomputer.

The next menu is Map. This shows a map of the tunnels which wraps round the screen and can be scrolled from left to right.

Your position is marked by a X and you can also set a market to any section simply by pointing at it and pressing Fire.

These markers are used by the ship's Navigational Locking System (Nav. Lock on the map menu bars) to calculate a route for your ships to anywhere in the tunnels.

The E.T.U. menu shows the energy levels of the four Energy Transfer Units in the tunnel complex.

The info menu simply gives an overview of the biocomputer and provides a valuable identification chart for the differing life stages of the Scrim.

There are several extra options available on the main menu.

Of course you can always work out your own routes to the ETU's if you reckon you know better than your on-board computer.

The scrolling is amazingly fast for the Spectrum - you can make things move *very* rapidly. And then there's the terrific sense of being enclosed by the tunnel walls. All very atmospheric.

Micronaut is Pete Cooke's best yet. And the blurb contains the best excuse why there's no real sound effects in a Spectrum game I reckon I've ever read. What is it? Well Pete says that because the tunnels are kept in a semi-vacuum condition, you wouldn't be able to hear much. Nice excuse - great game.