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Do you remember, way back in 1973, when the deep space probe Pioneer 10 passed Jupiter and began its mysterious journey into outer space? What do you mean, you weren't even born then? Never mind, it did anyway, carrying diagrams of ourselves, examples of our customs and musical tastes.

Mind you, if they sent a cross-section of some of the music that was around in the early seventies, who'd want to get in touch with us?

The year now is 3021 AD, and Pioneer has returned. However, it's brought along some very unexpected company with it. Carrying the probe is a very highly armed alien ship which, shock, horror, has left its self-destruct mechanism well and truly operative, threatening to blow the Earth from here to eternity, as it were. (I told you that music was bad, didn't I?)

The fact of the matter is, if someone doesn't get in there quick and disarm it, life as we know it will cease to be, and that's where you come in.

As a mega shoot-'em-up blast, Extreme is guaranteed to attract a huge following. Exciting from the word go, the action just keeps on hotting up until the final confrontation deep within the bowels of the spaceship.

Equipped with some heavy duty missile launchers and guns, the idea is to go in gunning and keep on going until you're forced to stop. In this epic offering, however, this will happen all too often, as you are confronted by some extremely puzzling conundrums.

Carefully does it. You'll need to be on your toes at all times to work your way out of some of the colourful locations, and you'll need your wits about you at all times, in order to work out ways of progressing without setting off that bad old bomb.

In between the braintwisting, though, you'll encounter more than your fair share of blasting, as you take on the alien pirates. Your heavy duty armour will help out, but sheer firepower is the only way through these sections.

As you dive deep into the fuel tanks and struggle to restore the ship's power crystal, keep your eyes peeled for various weapons and powerups lying around. As you reach the main computer terminal and begin the frantic struggle to put it out of action, you're going to need all the help you can get.

Featuring superb animated graphics and some truly momentous sound effects, the excellent parallax scrolling of Extreme is a joy to behold. All in all, Extreme is designed to test the 8-bit machine to the limits, and succeeds on all counts.