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I'd seen this played on the C64 and I'd heard some good things about it, so I was interested to see a Spectrum version of Thrust turn up in the office a little while ago.

Thrust is a simple enough game, and quite old fashioned in many ways, being a sort of cross between Asteroids and Lunar Lander. The game puts you in control of a small space craft shaped like an upside down 'V' which hovers above the surface of a planet. At first, it is slowly drilling down towards the ground, but quite quickly speeds up as gravity draws you downwards. Using the rotate left/right and thrust controls you have to guide your craft over the surface of the planet and collect the energy pod.

Controlling the craft is difficult enough, as there's gravity and your own momentum to contend with, but there's also the problem of the Lympet guns which defend the pods. The guns are powered by nuclear plants and, if you can fire enough shots at the plants, the guns can be deactivated temporarily, but if you overdo it you'll end up sending the plant critical and destroying the whole planet (which isn't a good idea!).

Then add to all that the problem of your every decreasing fuel supply and the tricky task of collecting additional fuel from the supply pods on the surface and you're faced with a game that is made up of several simple tasks which combine to make quite a tricky game. Hovering over the planet isn't too hard, and neither is picking up the fuel or energy pods, but when you try to do both these things and conserve your fuel and dodge bullets at the same time, that's when things start to get tricky.

There is just one pod on each planet, and once you've collected that you just head skywards and the game will move you on to the next planet. The first couple of planets aren't too much trouble, but on the later planets the pods and spare fuel get hidden away in deeper and more complex caves, and are protected by more and more guns, so it's not a game you'll master in a few minutes.

The graphics are quite simple, but the animation and responsiveness of your craft are all quite smooth (and at least the simplicity of the graphics allows you to avoid attribute problems). My only doubt about the game is that because you have to do through all the planets in a fixed order you might get a bit fed up going through all those early planets in order to master the later ones. Oh, and once you've chosen your control keys you can't redefine them without starting from scratch and reloading the game again, so it's not a good idea to play the game with a friend unless he/she wants to use exactly the same controls.

Thrust is an old fashioned game that isn't going to set the world alight, but it's been well enough thought out to be challenging and fun for a few rainy afternoons and it's probably one of Firebird's better budget releases of recent months.