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There are plenty of Star Trek-type games for the BBC Micro, but the latest Acornsoft offering has a few novel ideas of its own. In Starship Command you are a Starfleet captain. This is your first starship, so you need to prove yourself.

And with far more aliens to fend off than you can possibly defeat, proving yourself won't be easy.

The basic idea of the game is to stop alien spaceships taking over the final frontiers of space - not to mention going where no human hand has ever set food. Or something of that kind. It's a one-player game, but you can rig the odds a bit by giving either yourself or the enemy small or large torpedoes, to be fired out of the front of the spacecraft.

The aliens have obviously decided to move in on our galaxy in a big way, because they just keep coming at you. There's no way you can stop them all, so after stopping as many as possible, you turn tail and get out fast by escape capsule.

First, you must decide on the size of the torpedoes you want to give to your ship and to the enemy. Then you're in deep space, with the aliens all around you.

You hit an alien amidships with one of your torpedoes, with a mighty explosion, but then another alien sneaks up behind you and rams you, and you're in trouble.

Now your energy level starts to flash - there's nothing for it but to get out in the escape capsule. You hit the ejector button, and the sound of your ship's engines dies away, till with a tremendous explosion, bits of your doomed vessel are flung into space.

If you scored over 90 points, you are put back in command of your hastily-rebuilt spaceship, but this time the aliens are much bigger and more powerful.

If you've managed to wipe out a suitably high number of aliens, you can put your name onto the high score table. You're given only one chance in this game, and play is fast, but you do have some control over the speed.

This game will take time to learn, but I think it's well worth the effort. I have now managed to push my high score up to 1,155, but Acornsoft says scores of 3,000 have been achieved. That could take a while, but I am certainly well and truly addicted myself. I would recommend it.