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If anyone has ever doubted your shoot 'em up capabilities, now is the time to give Proof Of Destruction. POD has deliberately avoided any feeble scenario in favour of pure, unadulterated blasting.

In this case, the battleground is an interconnecting grid which spans an optional background of scrolling rainbow colours, and your POD (or PODs, for there is a two player option) can be directed anywhere along this matrix.

Aliens generally approach from the top of the screen and are swiftly despatched by the POD's blasters. The resultant explosion also destroys a piece of the grid and while the section heals within a few seconds, the gap is impassable and effectively restricts movement of both aliens and the POD.

Each level is timed, the aim being simply to stay alive until the timer runs out. An extra life is awarded every time a level is completed and thus the game only ends when all lives are lost during a level.

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: the garish backgrounds make POD a strain on the eyes
Sound: below average, lacking originality
Options: definable keys, one or two players

'Yawn, there aren't many games that I almost fall asleep in the middle of, but POD is one of the exceptions; within a few games it had bored me to tears. All it seems to consist of is a few psychedelic, eye wrenching screens with tons of aliens pouring out bullets at your craft. This goes on screen after screen; blam, blam, blam. Graphically POD is okay, but in the playability stakes, it's more or less a non-starter.'

'Yuk! What garish colours and terrible sound. And as for graphics - where are they? Each screen is just a grid with loads of little dots, lines and blobs, representing aliens, their bullets and your gunshots. Just to make it even more confusing your ship looks like the aliens'! The simplistic and difficult nature of the gameplay soon proves repetitive and ultimately boring.'

'Take a basic shoot 'em up, strip it of irrelevant scenario, take away the sound, throw in a flashy background and you're left with POD. The grid is an innovative idea, controls are smooth and the aliens fly in suitably devious formations. Unfortunately there is no atmosphere to complement the gameplay: sound effects are extremely limited and the rainbow scrolling merely obscures the action. Remove this and you're left with an uninspiring grid plus some very repetitive gameplay. One to avoid.'