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All your space-born skills will be needed to protect this convoy of spaceships in a mad dash across the universe!

Escorting a convoy through the galaxy, you are suddenly pitched into battle. You find yourself surrounded by hordes of aliens and in the middle of a meteor storm. The idea is to dodge the meteors as they whizz through space from all directions and avoid the aliens as they attempt to collide with you.

Your spacecraft is equipped with canisters of a deadly gas and your only hope of protecting the convoy is to release this in clouds in the path of an alien or meteor.

On contact with the gas the opposition is annihilated. Six cloudbursts of gas can be released at any one time, and, if you find yourself in a tight corner it's possible to hide in one until you can make good your escape.

Should your reactions be too slow to avoid a collision, you will be blown to bits in a very colourful explosion. You have six lives and a minimum of 40 seconds to score 1,000 points before moving on to the next level.

The game becomes more difficult on each succeeding level as the points scored for eliminating the aliens decrease and points deducted for allowing your convoy to be blown up increase. This makes it much harder to clock up 1,000 points in the 40 second period.

Strategic planning is necessary in Violent Universe so check how many points are awarded when you blow up the meteors, aliens and aircraft and plan your game accordingly. In this way you will be able to get to the higher levels of the game where the action becomes fast and furious as you try to beat the time limit.

On reaching level 4 and all subsequent levels, you become eligible to enter the Hall of Fame - *the* hi-score competition - by sending in your score to Fantasy together with the special code number which will allow them to verify it.

One small grouch, it was not at all easy to identify my convoy among the floating debris of meteors and aliens and this made protecting them very tricky as at first I keep gassing them. This point aside, an addictive game and well worth playing.

Violent Universe is available from Fantasy Software (formerly Quest) for the 16K and 48K Spectrum at £5.50.