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Code Hunter is one of those games that leaves you with red eyes, white knuckles and an overwhelming desire to kill something.

The Earth is under attack by a battlestar of metagalactic proportions. The only chance for survival is to send a code hunter droid into the battlestar's computer complex to decipher the codes that will de-activate its defences. The codes can then be transmitted back to Earth, the Battlestar disarmed and blown to bits by starfighter command.

You control the code hunter droid as it bounces around the Battlestar computer's innards. The computer network is made up of a series of 'cubic nodules' - which look for all the world like Spangles.

The differently marked spangles have various effects on your droid as it bounces around the network under joystick control. If you land on a Spangle with an 'H' on it you end up back on the square from which you started. Some spangles have a left pointing arrow, others a right pointing one. Landing on either of these sends you immediately in the appropriate direction to the next node. The same goes for up and down arrowed nodes.

The ones you really have to watch out for are the plus and minus nodes which replenish and drain your energy respectively. You can sit on a minus node for about five seconds, after which you'll need more than a bottle of Lucozade to get you going again.

Now, this is where it gets confusing, vexing and frustrating. Battlestars aren't content to sit back and let alien droids poke about with the innards of their computers. They deploy guards to chase after and nobble you. On the first screen there are two of them. Fortunately you are not completely undefended. By leaving a bomb on a node and moving away you can wait for the hapless guard to collide with it. This sends it into a bit of a pin and when it's stopped revolving you can move in and pick up its coded data device.

Doing this to two guards on a network made up of a dozen or so Spangle nodules is, it has to be said, something of a doddle. Then again there are sixteen levels, on level two there are three guards on a more complicated network and it doesn't get any easier after that. If you've got the kind of mind that can cope with working out where you've going to end up after hitting two lefts, a right, an up and two downs with a minus somewhere in between, not forgetting you've got two guards breathing down your neck and a bomb to place then you'll get along just fine. Otherwise get someone to tie you to the chair and remove any breakable objects or you might end up doing something you'll regret.