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Cybernoid may be considered by most to be the follow-up to Raffaele Cecco's previous work, the rather dull Exolon. But it turns out to be more of a clone of his aging arcade adventure Equinox (remember that?).

The plot has it that federation storage depots have been raided by space pirates and that you have been commissioned to retrieve as much of the minerals, jewels, ammunition and weaponry as possible, and then return them to a storage depot within a set time.

The pirate craft have also activated the planetary defence systems so you have to deal with them as well. If you fail to reach a depot in the time limit, or reach a depot without enough cargo you forfeit one of your ships.

Cybernoid is a flip screen shoot-'em-up with only one exit from each room (you can't go backwards). In some rooms you can find some damn hard locations which require precision timing to get past.

The stolen booty is collected by blasting the pirate ships. Most of them drop something, sometimes extra weaponry for your Cyber-craft. You also start the game with a varied arsenal; bombs (or jet propelled grenades), Impact Mines (guaranteed to shake off the most persistent pirates), Defence Shield (temporary invulnerability), Bounce Bombs (four balls which bounce around the screen destroying everything in their paths), and Seekers (missiles which home-in on gun emplacements).

As well as the standard weapons you can collect an indestructible mace which whizzes around your ship, destroying anything on contact. In case you feel a little breezy behind you can collect a rear firing laser which happily blasts away until your death.

The backdrops are fantastic; well thought out and coloured. Some of the big gun emplacements are really effective as well, even if they do look rather organic. The best graphic effect in Cybernoid occurs when you blow up a large piece of the landscape with a missile. A huge explosion goes off with loads of little chunks of debris flying everywhere.

The music accompanying the game can only be described as psychedelic but wonderful, with great use of filters. The sound effects are pretty hot too, and give a great feel when blasting the pirates.

Cybernoid is one of the few shoot-'em-ups I have really enjoyed in the past few months. It has a perfect balance between difficulty and playability, being able to grab and hold the player's attention for a long while.

It has been said by many before me, but take it from me (as I write this in the wee hours) this will definitely keep you up an' playin' for many months to come.