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The Empire Strikes Back coin-op, though not as popular as its predecessor, was a success in the arcades, and now reaches your home. This time you take on the role of Han Solo escaping the Empire's forces in addition to the main heroic actions of the young Jedi apprentice, Luke Skywalker.

Luke hurtles into battle first, racing his snowspeeder over the surface of the icy plains of Hoth. Imperial probots have been sent all over the galaxy by the Empire to find the Rebels' secret base, and many have reached the snow world. They have been programmed to send transmissions revealing the base's position into space so that the Empire's ground forces can be despatched.

Armed only with his snowspeeder's laserfire, Luke must attempt to halt the probots as they advance through the 3D vector graphics environment. The huge probots retaliate with sunburst lasers but only their heads are vulnerable to attack. Unless intercepted or avoided, enemy fire depletes shields. Once all five shields have disintegrated, your snowspeeder is destroyed. As the battle rages, the probots attempt to send visible communication waves skyward. As these hold the Rebel base's location data, they should be shot.

Despite Luke's valant efforts, the vital information filters through to the enemy. In the second stage of this epic adventure, Luke has to stop the awesome Empire vehicles from reaching the Rebel power generators, the destruction of which would leave the hideout defenceless. Huge All-Terrain Armoured-Transport walkers lumber slowly forwards on four legs, but are impervious to laser power. Instead, tow cables must be fired at their legs (using the space bar); a well-aimed shot causes them to stumble and explode. Scouting bipeds, known as AT-ST walkers also travel towards the generators. With a well-placed laser blast in the gun port they can be completely destroyed. Successful or otherwise, Luke takes to his X-wing and leaves the battle to begin his training with Yoda, the Jedi-master.

Meanwhile, Han, Chewie, Leia and the droids are in trouble. Unable to make the jump to light speed, due to the unfortunate polarisation of the negative-axis power coupling, they are trapped by the Empire's fleet, and attacked by Imperial TIE fighters. Swarms of craft approach firing shots and missiles at the ship. Should Han manage to fend them off using the Milennium Falcon's main cannon, he has to face the perils of an asteroid field. Giant hunks of indestructible rock hurtle towards the Millenium, chipping away at the power of its shields. If he survives long enough, Han may be able to reach the safety of an asteroid big enough to hide inside before meeting up with his old buddy, Lando, in the Bespin system.

The four stages are played repeatedly, and become progressively harder. On each level, bonus points are awarded for destroying a specific number of enemy targets. Occasionally, letters which spell out JEDI appear: if collected they boost your score.

The vector graphics in Star Wars were predictably slow and jerky; I expected the animation The Empire Strikes Back to be similarly slothful, but I was pleasantly surprised.

The routines are quite smooth and speedy, considering the limitations of the C64's processing speed: the AT-ATs, probots, TIE fighters, and other opponents can sometimes become a confusing mass of jagged lines, but generally they're well displayed.

Sonically, there's a vague attempt at recreating the Star Wars theme, but with the exception of some smart laser effects, the quality of the sound is relatively poor. As a pretty good (but not excellent) conversion of a slick vector graphics arcade game, this should go down very well with fans of the film and the coin-op, though maybe not so well with lesser devotees.

There was much jubilation when Domark announced that they would be commissioning a conversion of the arcade Star Wars on the Commodore, but many were disappointed by the version that was eventually released.

Now, after six months, comes The Empire Strikes Back, Vektor Grafix' second game in the Star Wars trilogy - and it's a considerable improvement over the first.

The presentation has been tweaked to capture more of the arcade's atmosphere, even down to the inclusion of the on-screen manual, though it doesn't accompany the action as it does in the original.

The speed has been increased a great deal and the whole game has a much more frantic feel than its predecessor. Those who bought Star Wars will undoubtedly want to pick this up. As for those who didn't - have a go anyway.

At the expense of a good number of ten pees, the force was with me on many occasions, both in the original Star Wars and its follow-up. Sad to say, I was very disappointed by Domark's version of Star Wars and didn't expect The Empire Strikes Back to be that amazing.

However, the sequel is a lot better than its predecessor, with better presentation and faster gameplay, though it still seems to lack that certain sometime which makes the arcade original so playable. It could be the absence of speech or in-game music, but that's not all; it just doesn't seem to flow.

The various enemies appear too randomly, so it's hard to pick out a particular target. I can see this appealing to Jedi afficionados who would rather play in the privacy of their homes, but other punters should try before they buy.

Presentation 84%
Illustrated in-game instructions and many of the arcade game's features.

Graphics 72%
Commendable vector graphics effectively portray frenetic battle action.

Sound 46%
Slightly off-tune Star Wars theme and functional effects.

Hookability 80%
Speeding over Hoth, shooting and dodging Imperial Walkers, is immediately exhilarating and easy to get into.

Lastability 62%
Action gets gradually harder, but the same four stages are repeated.

Overall 74%
A quality conversion that proves addictive despite itself.