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You are alone. Abandoned space station. Deep space. Radio transmissions out. You know the drill by now, Space Cadet. Explore. Pick up, juggle and use items. Avoid or shoot anything that moves. Start the spacecraft (the "Drifter" of the title) and pick up your pension. That's how to play the flick-screen graphic adventure Star Drifter, which begins with a loading screen that changes as the game loads in - it's amazing what counted as revolutionary once upon a time, isn't it?

Something else about the game which was also years ahead of its time is that Star Drifter starts with a tutorial of sorts in the form of a training mission to recover the spaceship's radio and bring it back to the bridge (or "starting position" if you prefer). Out into the perilous environs you venture, aliens buzzing about depleting your energy more swiftly than you can scream "Hang on, don't I even get a gun?!" and, three screens to the right, you find one. Ah ha! Now the game starts to really come together because you can opt to play as Rambo, blasting every alien you see and scoring big points, or you can take a more sanguine look at the game itself and play it in such a way that you might better survive long enough to complete the actual mission.

The first thing you'll notice, if you adopt the more intelligent approach, is that every screen is linked to its neighbours by one or more exits. Aliens teleport into each new screen you reach after a random amount of time has passed, but as soon as there are four aliens on-screen at the same time, no more appear. Hence, move your spaceman dead-centre, choose which exit you're moving toward and, if there are aliens buzzing around it, keep blasting until they are not only vapourised but their friends have teleported in to replace them behind you. This strategy will mean no chance of an alien teleporting in on your head as you reach your destination.

If you've kept a wary eye on the left-hand side of the screen you'll also be aware that the gun you picked up is an item and, like all the other items you'll find on board the space station, it can be dropped. Why would you ever want to drop this weapon? Well, you wouldn't want to, but on some occasions you'll have to. That's because Star Drifter is littered with doors, and some of them require you to be carrying two keys to be able to pass through them. With only three inventory places, you'll clearly be able to walk through these as merrily as you please with the keys that match the numbers on the door and the gun in place number three. But what happens when you then find another item that you need to carry through that door? The only solution is to temporarily swap it with the gun and try to perform the manoeuvre as quickly as possible! A word of warning though - don't confuse yourself and drop one of the keys instead, and never attempt to run through a door without either of the keys it needs. These doors don't just refuse to budge; they blast your little spaceman with a taser that repels him backward over several screens and wipes a chunk off his health!

The Drifter is a big beast. For the initial mission, you are restricted to about 20% of its total map but the doors requiring keys, force-fields that require good (although thankfully not perfect) timing to pass through and walls that must just be blasted away are fairly typical of the bigger mission. It's helpful to make a map (or download one from the Internet), although there are "bonuses" on practically every screen (floppy discs, cups, trophies, etc) that disappear and boost your score when walked into. This feature does help with mental mapping because you intuitively recognise screens you haven't yet traversed by the existence of the bonuses in them.

You're given three lives to start with, and each life has its own "oxygen supply" which depletes on contact with the buzzing aliens but can be replenished by the oxygen bags that are placed, at random, throughout the ship.

Graphically, Star Drifter is attractive with a full-screen playing area, big, colourful sprites and clearly delineated passageways. Sonically, there's very little. I know that in space no-one can hear you fart (or something) but this game takes that too literally; apart from a blip when you unleash a bullet the game is completely silent. Fortunately, it's all very reactive and crucially fun to play, managing to be quite good but also tough enough to provide a real challenge. It's a shame it does noticeably slow down commensurate to the number of aliens on screen, but it never drags its heels to such an extent that this could be classed as a problem.

Star Drifter has stood the test of time so it seems remarkable that in 1986, a game of this calibre retailed for just £1.99. Unsurprisingly, it received great praise on release and it sold in droves. The original release came in a white 'clamshell' box - the only one of Firebird's Electron releases to do so, suggesting it knew it had something special here. It usually changes hands now for around £2-£4. There is also a later budget release of the game which is significantly rarer and fetches slightly more.