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Calling all Spectrum owners! Don't hang about waiting for Elite to appear for your micro - rush out now and grab a copy of Starion from Melbourne House!

The company, which has made its name with mega-adventures like The Hobbit and Sherlock takes a bold step forward in arcade-style game technology with an innovative and addictive game.

The scenario goes like this. The year is 2010 - but there's no sign of a star-child anywhere! You are Starion, fresh out of the space academy and rated as one of the top new pilots. Your mission is to fly the first ever Timeship, the S.S. Stardate and to boldly go back in time to correct the devastation created by - you guessed it - an evil race of aliens.

The game is big - 243 screens of space-time filled with exciting wire graphic ships and other dangers.

To save the universe from collapse, Starion has to engage and destroy enemy ships in each of the timezones. But it doesn't stop there. Each ship is carrying a cargo with materialises in space as a giant letter of the earth alphabet.

You must collect all the letters from each time zone until your onboard computer asks you to unscramble them to identify the original cargo dislodged in time by the enemy.

Once you've done this, you must find a time warp and fly into it. Then the time grid is displayed. Now you have to decide in which of the eight neighbouring time zones your unscrambled cargo belongs.

You then jump to the selected time zone, land on the planet you find and then see if your cargo can solve the particular problem being experienced on the planet.

Get it right and your fuel and oxygen supplies will be replenished and it's off into battle again. Get it wrong and you have to destroy enough enemy ships, mines and missiles to create a new time warp in order to make good your escape.

Once you have corrected history in all nine zones of the first time grid, you'll be asked to take the first letters of each particular bit of cargo you've used to save planets in this bit of time - and work out a password to get into the next time grid... Sounds a bit complicated - but once you get into the game you'll be hooked.

You get a ranking as you progress through the game. The ultimate award is Creator - as at the very end of the game and by the odd logic of time travel you've ended up at the beginning of time and, well, you're all there is!

Programmer David Webb, a 19-year old student, spent nine months working on Starion - and if there's any justice in the world he will be rewarded with a number one hit!