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It is the year 3097 and the Football League has gone to the logical conclusion of its present day actions and abolished soccer altogether. Instead you spend your Saturday afternoons on the terraces of an interstellar asteroid watching a couple of rotofoils belting up and down a grid after a ball. The national game is now Ballblazer.

The screen is split into two halves a la Pitstop II. You are strapped into a rotofoil - a sort of jet-powered bathchair - and before you is an enormous green grid stretching into the distance. Out there somewhere is your opponent - the grid curves, so he may be behind the horizon. A klaxon sounds and the ball is shot somewhere onto the grid. All you have to do is locate it and put it away between the goal beams that maraud around the pitch boundaries. This all takes place at the speed of light (or so it seems).

It's particularly important to work with one eye on either screen because you need to know where your opponent is, and more importantly where he is headed if he has possession. It can also work to your benefit if you can place yourself in front of him. Much of the work is actually done for you, your rotofoil locks into the ball constantly, and when you are close enough its 'pullfield' holds the ball for you. Then It's just a question of racing downfield for goal and avoiding your opponent who will try and dispossess you by firing the ball from your energyfield. A buzzing noise alerts you that you are in a position to fight for the ball.

The idea is very simple, but I'm not sure it that lends it any beauty. It gave me little satisfaction to beat a droid (on lower levels naturally) and even less from scoring. This must really be the acid test - if it's no fun to score what's the point. Playing a human opponent improved this slightly, but I couldn't help feeling inhibited by the constraints of the game, which is otherwise very cleverly programmed. Something was missing, some aggression maybe.