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Firebird are obviously out to encroach on Mastertronic's outright superiority in the cheapy software market. If Caverns Of Eriban is indicative of what's to come, they stand every chance of being successful.

As the pilot of a mine supply ship, your job is to enter the Caverns Of Eriban (somewhere near Stevenage I think) and deliver the supplies to the mining depots.

In all there are twenty-five depots all desperately in need of their week's supply of lamps, drill bits, canaries, shredded wheat, clean socks, shaving foam, blow-up plastic ladies, and all the other things that make life down a mine a little more bearable.

The only problem is that your weedy little supply ship can only carry enough supplies for five depots at a time. The first job then, is to land at one of the five supply depots on the surface and pick up some stuff. Then it's the long descent into the caverns.

This is very tricky indeed. The major cause of disaster is the planet's (I suppose they mean Stevenage) ancient defence mechanisms. Homing missiles, stalactites, dripping deadly acid, bouncing balloons, bubbling lava pools and other 'thingies' all lie in wait.

If the defence mechanism doesn't get you you'll probably make a pretty good job of destroying yourself.

Your ship has a sort of two-speed gearbox. If you push the joystick say, left, naturally enough you go left. But hold it there for a second and you go into overdrive. All very well until you need to stop. If you let go you'll come to a rest soon, but not usually soon enough. Turning round and applying a bit of reverse thrust will do the trick, but it takes a while to get the timing right.

Meanwhile be prepared to spend a lot of time crashing into walls. The caverns have many tight corners and narrow gaps and it takes practice and a fair amount of patience to make a worthwhile impact. This month's super hot tip is: find neutral zones where you can take a rest without being blown to bits.

Caverns Of Eriban is well worth two quid of anyone's money. Incidentally I don't think authors get nearly enough credit for games, so to put the record straight this month: Caverns was written by Lee Braino and the music (which is very good) by Chris Cox and Ian Cray.