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Now, stop me if you've heard this one before... Planet Earth is under attack... What? You have? Yep, you've guessed it. This is YASEU (Yet Another Shoot-Em-Up). You are the commander of the last of Earth's orbitting space stations. For no apparent reason the Cylons have got it in for your beloved planet. Presumably because they have had tempers, they start attacking it with their missiles.

Your view of this exciting event is 3D, looking into space, with the earth and the moon in the top left hand corner. The Cylons move from the right of the screen to the left and then to the bottom-right getting larger as they get nearer.

When they pass poor old Earth they fire a deadly lithium missile (in reality a blob). This missile explodes either as it hits earth or when the Cylon ship gets hit.

You control a phaser sight which moves in four directions using the keys. I found movement difficult to start off with and certainly if you can stand this game, a joystick option would have been a good idea.

That wouldn't have helped the fact that after every few shots the phaser overheated and cut out. I know that this it was supposed to be part of the appeal of the game but I found it really annoying.

At the bottom of the screen there is a countdown from ten thousand. This is supposed to represent the lifespan of Earth's shields. Whenever the Earth is hit this number decreases and when it reaches 1,000, the Earth starts flashing.

When it reaches nought the Earth explodes into 'hundreds of pieces'. This bit is quite good with meteors and fireballs flying off quite effectively. Definitely the most interesting part of the game. The problem is that it takes so long to get there.

If you've saved up to get a game for your Beeb then buy a decent one. *Don't* get this.

The game loads preceded by a nice title page. When the actual game loads, a very impressive looking screen pops up after half a minute wait. You wait nervously, with your hands poised over the RETURN key. Then, one flickering object wobbles across the screen.

You try desperately to move it into the flickering sight. You can't move fast enough, but if you fail in your mission, the earth will explode into hundreds of tiny pieces. Can you stand the tension?

Yes, is the answer. This game is easy and since it's written in Basic, is frustratingly slow and unchallenging. Cannot be recommended.

After about ten minutes of saving the Earth, I was getting bored. The spacecraft come in the same patterns and always one at a time, so that you just move left and right and blast them easily!

The Earth is well drawn and there are lusty explosions, particularly when the Earth is destroyed. But it will take more than saving the Earth to bring me back to this game... since it just does not give enough to keep you interested.