At the recent 6809 show I spoke to Quickbeam, and found them a pleasant company, who knew that their games were not original, and were proud of it! I liked them!!

Dickie Spaceman is their version of a certain Spectrum game which involved a man jetting around on alien planets, and collecting fuel for his spaceship.

There are five different alien types, several space-ships, and a difficulty level which controls how many aliens appear on a planet.

The scenario is this. There exist, somewhere in this amazing and expanding universe, planets where pieces of turf are free-floating. You land on many of these planets, and must basically catch the fuel that precipitates from the top of the screen and load it on to your spaceship until, when your ship is full of fuel, you board and take off.

To aid you in this task you have your handy jet-pack strapped to your back, and your super neutron blaster held in your hands to slaughter mercilessly any aliens that might happen to get in your way.

The game plays awfully and looks worse. The troubles with it are, in order of importance, 1) It's too fast!, 2) It's too jerky!, 3) The graphics are nowhere near as good as the Spectrum version (and there is *no* excuse for that!), 4) Every time you play or land on a planet you have to hear the overworked strains of the Star Wars theme. (It occurs to me that if John Williams ever claims royalties from all the various companies that use his theme, he will make another fortune!)

I am sure that many software lemmings will rush out and buy this game, despite my warnings to wait tor a better version to be available, but then, what can you do?