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You are a rather nice dragon. (Every Christmas I say this to my Aunt Mildred but if she was playing Dragon Spirit it'd be literally true.) But Auntie wouldn't be interested in Dragon Spirit because it's not knitting, but a vertically-scrolling Commodore 64 game. The idea is that you must pilot your dragon-like frame over some mountains, rivers, ox-bow lakes and glacial moraines.

But then a whole heap of aliens appear and try and bomb you. Moving from side to side and up and down the screen, you avoid these bombs and trry and blow up the nasties. It's traditional Christmas shoot-'em-up fayre and it's also great.

The further you get, the nastier the aliens get. It's not fair but it makes for a lot of excitement, squealing and cries of "Oh rats. I've lost again. I'm only glad I'm not paying for the electricity!"

The scrolling is dead smooth and the dragon moves as fast as you'd expect but not quite as fast as you'd really like. In fact, the difficulty is pitched just right, because just as you think you haven't got a hope, you get a load of collectables such as extra lives, better weapons and, er, cash handouts. Fine and dandy by me. Turn up the volume, turn out the lights, trip up as you try to find your way back to the keyboard - and get to it.

Slide effortlessly over some pretty landscapes whilst blasting the life out of as many aliens as you can. If that's the rucksack you're into, Dragon Spirit is at a price that's right (completely free would have been righter, though).