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You are a fleet commander in the Xenon Space Academy. Your mission is to journey to the planet Radon, and protect it from the Zorgon battle star. En route you will encounter various weird and wonderful aliens, who will attempt to destroy your space craft.

The first wave is made up of strange green birds, who fly erratically about the screen and drop bombs on you. If you survive this first onslaught, the second wave consists of fiendish, hovering hedgehogs which clone on being hit, and (surprise, surprise) drop bombs on you.

If you are fortunate enough to survive the hedgehogs with one of your three lives still intact, you must journey through deep space, which in Xenon-1's case seems to be populated by flying carrots, bent on your destruction.

The penultimate scenario is probably the most difficult and exciting. Your task is to destroy waves of 'paratrons' before they reach the ground. If they land on you, they explode - but if they reach ground level, they burrow into the earth, and attempt to stick bayonets into the soles of your feet!

Once you have fulfilled your quota of paratrons, it only remains to destroy the very impressive Zorgon Battle Star.

Xenon-1 is an exciting arcade style game, with fast and colourful graphics. Nine levels of difficulty are available; the lowest of which kept me frustrated for hours.

The least spectacular thing about the game was the sound, which was made up of fairly standard 'explode' and 'shoot' noises. This, however, is a minor quibble, and one which in no way would stop me recommending Xenon-1 as a worthy addition to your Oric games library.