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Space Command is the best offering yet from the elderly (cough!) team of Poole and Murray, authors of Yomp and Rider, also from Virgin. Here the quasi-militaristic tone of their earlier work has been replaced with good ol' SF. You play Defender (no relation) to a domed Kandor-style asteroid which is busy ploughing through the galactic spacelanes.

As you might imagine, this reckless behaviour is guaranteed to arouse the ire of local lifeforms and they do their best to flatten the flying city.

It's all very similar to Imagic's old Atlantis ROM. The graphics are nice, although nowhere near as sensational as the promo blurb would have you believe, and the gameplay is tough. I've yet to clear the first wave, who look like renegades from Jet Pac! Limited laser fire and shallow fuel tanks add to your problems.

I guess if you're still in the market for a space shoot-'em-up, then this is worth a look, although after an hour or so I wasn't so much addicted as cheesed off. Hope the next one's a little more original boys.