Now this is more like it! A brilliantly addictive game which really makes you want to barricade yourself into a room for a week in order to finish it. Those of you who have played Rotor on the Arc will be familiar with the gameplay, which is also similar to that of the old BBC game, Thrust. You pilot a highly manoeuvrable, circular craft which is influenced by a gravitational pull which is about half that of the Earth... but who said anything about Earth?

Your task is to recover the power crystals from a rapidly overheating nuclear reactor in a Martian colony. You also have to avoid its automatic defence systems which have gone haywire, and to top it all, some unfriendly aliens have moved in while nobody was looking. The graphics and animation really are superb. Your drop-ship rotates smoothly and is extremely responsive - a burst of thrust which goes on a fraction of a second too long can send you careering into the wall. You have to put up with self-aiming gun turrets, artificial gravity generators and swarming defence droids which are all out to get you. The backdrop is that of a slime-ridden technoplex, brimming with pods which swell and burst 'Aliens'-style. When you successfully destroy something, credits are released which you can collect and use as money.

Between each of the fifteen levels, you can do a little shopping to refuel your craft or upgrade it with some of several gadgets available which include a wing gun and extra firepower. Passwords are given every three levels so you don't have to start at the beginning every time. The main complaint I have os that the screen scrolls room-by-room instead of continuously. Whast would have been better (and I'm sure it's possible) is a sort of centralised scrolling where the background follows your ship and not the other way round. Otherwise, this is a first rate game and deserves to do well.