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So you're getting pretty sick of arcade games? Bored with flying a spaceship through a barrage of nondescript nasties? You need a revitalising tonic. Playing Encounter may just provide that pick-me-up. It's a true three-dimensional combat game.

You use the joystick to move in any direction through a barren landscape scattered with huge black pylons - rather like a Salvador Dali painting. The screen is actually the window of your ship. Pylons loom large and recede into tiny specks as you move backwards and forwards or weave in and out of them.

But the idea behind the game is lamentably rather threadbare: you hunt out and destroy the flying saucers that roam around.

A radar scanner at the bottom of the screen helps you track them down. Needless to say, the saucers also fire at you. And missiles appear occasionally - although you don't know who or what fired them.

You can duck behind pylons but they won't guarantee your safety. Pylons will stop the saucer's shots but smart-Alec missiles go round them, bounce off them and can get you on the rebound. Four hits to your craft and the game ends. Destroy all the sacuers and you move up a level into even more weird and wonderful scenery.