Supavaders is just one of two games on a special Vic 20 pack from K-Tel, a company that is now making its mark in the world of computer software. Supavaders is, as you might guess, a variation on a very old theme.

According to the publicity blurb your objective is to secure the future of the earth by destroying the powerful alien force known as the Supavaders. This, so we are told, will require skill and courage.

The instructions state that playing the game will require the cursor keys, but after rapidly losing many a life you discover that they really mean the less than and greater than keys. Let's hope the final documentation is an improvement over the initial samples we had for review.

Four other keys allow you to fire left, right, up and down, since these aliens are intelligent. They have baby aliens, who live on the surface of the planet. They don't seem to do very much, but it is disconcerting to see hordes of the beady-eyed little devils hopping up and down underneath you.

A number of innovations make this one stand out from the usual run-of-the-mill variations on a Space Invaders theme. The major improvement is a sideways scrolling screen that allows you to move off the screen to left and right and follow the aliens as they bob about at the top of the screen.

Thankfully they don't get any lower as time moves on, but every now and again one of them will leave the main formation and fall down to earth. If this doesn't happen on the screen window you're looking at you'll soon hear about it, as they make a dreadful whine whilst falling to the surface of the planet.

If an alien makes it to the surface before you shoot it down it leaves a number of little aliens sitting at the bottom of the screen.

Apart from that the rest of it is pretty much standard Space Invaders fare: fun at first, but ultimately boring.

A reasonable enough version of the old classic, and you do get another program on the reverse side of the tape. This is called Bomber Run, and is presumably written by the same author, as it shares many features with Supavaders.

Competent, but nothing brilliant.