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There are those people who hold up their copy of Thrust and proclaim it an enduring modern classic, an epic adventure with realistic forces, inertia and gravity. And then there are those people, like me, who think it's pants.

It comes from one of the same programmers as Exile, which is widely regarded as the best Electron game ever, and, like that game, it's played from the side, and set in deep space in a procedurally-generated world. In Thrust, you take control of a scout ship and must find your way through monochrome levels. There are several things you can do but ultimately you must find the "Klyston pod" on each level and carry it to the very top of the screen. So let's stick with that as a mission objective for now.

Thrust is one of those games where you can rotate your ship rather than move it, so the CTRL and A keys spin it like pointers on a clockface. The game's called Thrust because you use the Shift key to propel (thrust) it forward, and the longer you hold down the key, the more momentum you inject into its journey. As the game itself invariably involves finding your way through tightly-packed caverns, you therefore want to tap this key rather than press it. The scout ship is Responsive with a capital R, which means both rotation and thrust occurs instantly and you're expected to proceed with the utmost care throughout each level.

Which brings me to the main problem with Thrust. It's very, very difficult.

Many people, it seems to me, seem not to accept this cold fact. And I suspect it's because they're the type of people who know all about physics and can calculate velocity and time in their heads. I've seen some people blessed with these kinds of brains rock and roll the scout ship around like it's an extension of one of their limbs. But I'm not one of them, so I try to play the game carefully instead. And that's where the other problems creep in.

The caverns are littered with limpet guns which, although they face at 45 degree angles, are capable of firing bullets throughout a much wider range. Sometimes as you approach them they take you out with a single shot. They don't move so you have no idea of which way they are 'facing' beforehand, and your craft, whilst it can indeed fire, must be facing directly at them in order to stand any chance of a direct hit. Even though you have a shield (Space bar), it's grossly unfair. You have to creep along the narrow passageways, juggling the rotation and direction keys, and yet you're expected, whilst performing this incredibly delicate operation, to angle the ship in a completely different direction and take out the cavern's defences. The word "Hard" is simply not adequate enough to describe it.

Around the caverns, you'll find Fuel pods to replenish your dwindling supply, and the "Klyston pod" which it is the aim of the game to collect. Once you've collected the pod, you can't pick up the fuel any more, because that would mean letting the pod go, and once the pod is attached to the scout ship, it's impossible to let it go.

To pick up either the fuel or the pod, you use a "tractor beam" which requires you to be directly above the thing you want to pick up. Fuel is immediately absorbed. The pod however, hangs off the back of your craft, completely altering the way you must control the scout ship itself. The pod is as heavy as lead, meaning you need much more thrust once you've collected it; more thrusting equals more fuel. But the pod is also a counterweight to whatever angle you must rotate the ship in, swinging out behind it and then exerting gravitational pull on the ship opposite to the direction it faces.

If you have the sort of brain that can take all these counteracting forces into account, then you'll effortlessly find yourself able to "correct" the offset and bring the pod to safety. If you're me, you'll find the pod spins around alarmingly and drags you straight into a cavern wall. After all of that effort to locate it, after all those tricky limpet guns have been dealt with... Whoaaaaah, what the -? Boom. Dead. Arsehole.

Now let's return to those mission objectives. If you hate the idea of the limpet guns then why not deactivate them? On each level of Thrust you'll find a power reactor which, if you pump it full of lead, will go critical, powering down the guns. Now you can traverse the caverns a lot faster, but with the proviso that the power reactor is on a countdown to destroying the entire planet, including you. This little playing tweak adds levels of frustration to the game that verge on the diabolical, as you frantically race through the mission, somehow manage to grab the pod, risk everything to blast your way back to the surface in record time... and then get blown up a nano-second before you make it! Boom. Dead. Arsehole!!

How about varying the mission objective a little bit more? Why not try collecting the pod "normally", but then leaving disabling the reactor to last? That way, you won't run any chance of being wiped out in the nuclear holocaust because you'll definitely have the necessary time to make good your escape, right?

Yes, as theoretical plans go, this seems to make sense. The problem is that by the time you try it, you'll have a pod swinging from your craft's rear end and so angling downwards at the reactor to shoot your stream of bullets at it is more likely to wind up with you shooting the pod instead, not to mention that you'll likely find the pod hits the reactor itself and... Boom. Dead. Arsehole!!!

I consider myself to be a reasonable games player, but, at the same time, if a game is of supersonic difficulty, I am more likely to look elsewhere than to spend months and months persevering with it. That's just how I roll. So I have a real problem with how Thrust was hyped up on its release. Yes, perhaps the Acorn press were just happy to get a good conversion of the arcade machine it was based on... but how immensely frustrating it is to play was simply glossed over. Only A&B Computing really touched upon the fact it seemed a "step backwards" when compared to what was currently emerging on the Electron's game scene.

The biggest irk is the lack of lives, and lack of a password system to reach subsequent levels. It's just not on to write something this vexing and send you all the way back to level one every time you're killed off.

However, if you're that certain type of games player that I've already alluded to, you won't be listening to me and may already be surfing eBay looking for a physical copy for, according to Electron User, this "classic game, at which the natural games player will excel". (Natural? Hmmmm.) You'll find it either standalone (around £7, or £3 for the budget version), or on the Five Star Games II, 10 Computer Hits 4 or Play It Again Sam compilations, which can be picked up for around £2 each.