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The Empire Strikes Back, George Lucas' brilliant sequel to Star Wars, was released to a delighted public in 1980; its Oscar-winning special effects helping it to become one of the top-grossing films in cinema history.

The story continues directly from where Star Wars left off. After their successful assault on the giant Death Star battlestation, the Rebel Alliance has gone into hiding on the ice planet Hoth. However, they're forced to scatter when the evil Empire discovers their location and sends forth a large attack fleet.

Following a series of adventures, the characters reassemble on the cloud world of Bespin, where disaster strikes! To tell you more would ruin the ending if there's anyone out there who hasn't seen the film.

The film features some incredible action sequences ideally suited to a video game. So, in similar fashion to Star Wars, Lusasfil's Games Group joined forces with Atari to produce a vector graphic arcade game-of-the-film.

It appeared in late 1983 in the guise of a conversion kit for Star Wars arcade coin-ops. Because of this, it never appeared in any great numbers - unless an arcade had an on-sight electronics engineer handy, the operator had to send the machine back to the manufacturers for upgrading - but that hasn't stopped Domark from buying the rights and converting it to home computer formats.

It's a brilliant arcade game, with four action sequences and what seems like half the film's dialogue digitised into memory. The Spectrum version lacks the speech, but it is an otherwise faithful copy of the original, and boasts nearly all the gameplay features.

At first the player chooses either an easy, medium or hard game, which starts the action on the first, third or fifth wave respectively. If either of the latter two are selected, a special advanced player bonus is awarded when the first four attack waves are completed.

Once a level is selected, the game begins proper with the player at the controls of a Snowspeeder skimming low over the planet Hoth in search of the Empire's Probots. These scout droids have landed on the planet in search of the Rebel base, and are destroyed with one blast from the Snowspeeder's laser.

Care has to be taken not to run into their defensive laser bursts, which deplete one of the speeder's five sheilds on contact.

The second level puts the player against the Empire's surface invasion force. Giant four-legged AT-ATs and smaller bi-pedal AT-STs are heading towards the Rebel base and must be stopped at all costs. Both types of machine can be destroyed by shooting their tiny cockpit windows, and AT-ATs can also be brought down by firing one of the Snowspeeder's limited supply of two cables at their legs.

Daring players can also go for a special trick flying bonus by flying through the legs of an AT-AT, although the move is a tricky one and runs the risk of losing a shield through collision with the metal behemoth.

When the invasion fleet is repelled, the Snowspeeder lands at the rebel base and the scene shifts to outer space, where the player flies the Millenium Falcon against rebel TIE-fighters. This level is very similar to the first in Star Wars, only this time the Executer, Darth Vader's huge starcruiser, looms menacingly in the background instead of the Death Star battlestation. TIE-fighters zoom in from all angles, twisting and turning and firing rounds of shield-reducing laser bursts. The pilot defends himself against the attack with the Millenium's laser cannon, but because it's rather weak, TIEs have to be hit directly on their engines before they explode - a difficult task under pressure!

Finally, the player guides the Falcon through an asteroid field to safety. The craft has no means of defending itself from the myriad of spinning rocks, so it's up to the pilot to skilfully fly the spacecraft through the densely-packed field without hitting an asteroid. This is definitely the hardest of all the levels and requires some very nifty joystick wielding to avoid the rocks as they whizz by.

When that level is completed, a bonus is awarded and the player returns to the first level again, only this time the enemy forces are far stronger.

Presentation is excellent throughout, and there's an on-screen Rebel instruction manual which can be accessed before play to display all enemy craft. Programmers have also included the JEDI bonus, on each we have a bonus and a letter - either J, E, D or I - is awarded for shooting down a given number of targets.

I must confess to being a great fan of the arcade game (the only two I ever found were in Blackpool and the Las Vegas arcade in London) and have been looking forward to the conversion since Domark announced it more than a year ago. The Spectrum version isn't at all disappointing, and looks and plays very similarly to the arcade original. The second level is absolutely superb, and the depth is incredible. The only thing that lets it down is its occasionally slow screen update, but other than that the game is excellent and well worth looking up.