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When the headline appeared on the front page of the Soon-Day Spirit, all hell broke loose. Generation after generation of newspaper, not magazine, journalists had flaunted the good name of little green men everywhere and enough was enough. As a result, the entire galaxy declared war on the Earth. All would have been lost were it not for the dreaded Gemini project.

Once again, the cutting edge of science brings forth the doomsday machine, the only craft capable of defeating the alien hordes, and you, the perfect pilot for such a craft. Of course, the Gemini craft have one rather special advantage, the gumball. Those rather peculiar weapon pods form a tail on the back of your craft.

Holding down the Fire button causes the gumball nearest your craft to detonate. With such devastating devices as the wall of flame and the infamous windscreen wiper of death, it sounds like a huge windscreen wiper composed of fireballs; little can stand before it. Of course, the rest of the galaxy is not exactly messing around.

When you first experience the starting level you can be forgiven if you despair a little. At first the alien hordes overwhelm the senses; never before has the Amstrad screen been so busy. Endless lives disappear before your eyes as you try to assimilate the action and dodge the bullets.

This is made a little more difficult by the lack of colours on the Amstrad, because there is so much happening and insufficient colours to separate one sprite clearly from another. You learn to distinguish between sprites, given a little practice.

The action is constant but to puzzle the complacent player each level has its particular way of dealing with your ship. The general feel of the game is organic, not only with the living aliens but with the landscapes, which although not slimy and pulsating, definitely give the impression of being alive at some stage in development.

Each level has the obligatory mega alien which ranges from the salmon head to the worms emerging from a displaced snout.

As you blast your way to victory, watch for the clawed aliens. Destroying them liberates gumballs which can be collected and added to your trailing arsenal.

Each time you complete a level you are given a password. If it is entered at the start of the program you will start the game from the appropriate level. What is more, each time you die you do not go back to level 1 but to the beginning of the level indicated by the password.

This must be one of the fastest and busiest shoot-'em-ups on the market - real frontier work on your Amstrad.