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When Uridium was first released on the C64, its addictive arcade action blasted the charts and spawned a series of clones. Now, at last, the Spectrum version is complete and it's just as good.

Massive alien Super-Dreadnoughts hover menacingly above planets draining their minerals at an alarming rate. Your mission is to fly your Manta fighter and destroy these alien leviathans before it's too late.

Unfortunately, this is almost as impossible as it sounds because each Dreadnought has hordes of alien fighters that swarm to get you as well as lurking launchers that spit deadly homing mines. If that's not enough then the Dreadnought's labyrinth of communication aerials and meteor shielding form hazards that could have a fatal impact on the unwary pilot.

Your Manta fighter is highly manoeuvrable and can even flip on its side to squeeze through the narrowest gaps. Twin firing lasers form your defence, as well as the means to blast away sections of the Dreadnought's hull.

Some aliens are quite harmless and earn you a hefty bonus when you wipe out a while wave, yet chasing the last one can lead you into a trap or a collision with a meteor shield. Others are less friendly and some are downright unpleasant, announcing their presence with a hail of bullets before diving at you like deranged lemmings.

Deadliest of all are the insidious mine launchers that detect your presence then fire a homing mine to destroy you. They follow you with uncanny accuracy for fifteen terrifying seconds before they explode. You can avoid them either by ducking behind a meteor shield or outrunning them for their full time span.

If you destroy enough of the Dreadnought and blast away its aliens then you'll be awarded the welcome "land now" message that signals surrender. Land successfully (not always a simple task!) and you're warped onto the next Super-Dreadnought before yoou can sign any autographs.

Smooth scrolling and sensible colour selection leaves you to worry about the action rather than the graphics.

An excellent conversion of a superb arcade game.