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You might think that there was not a lot of mileage left in the basic Space Invaders format. After Invaders, Galaxians, Pheonix, etc, what is left but to combine them all - at six times the speed?

As the last remaining guardian of a distant planet, you have to defend the surface against a wide variety of alien nasties who are determined to take the place by force.

The program loads in three parts, the first giving instructions and allowing the control keys to be defined to your preference - a very good idea. The second part provides a title screen.

The game positions you at the base of the screen defending a small strip of green which is intended to represent the planet's surface. Above you strings of aliens do circuits and bumps in a variety of eye-stretching manoeuvres intended more to confuse than be hostile. They drop the occasional bomb, but these are generally easy to avoid. The speed at which the aliens move makes it difficult to think of taking aim and it is largely down to luck whether you make a killing or not.

The main worries later on are the mother ships which slide smoothly around at the top of the screen dropping 'pods'. These explode on landing to produce red 'crabs' which scurry off to the edge of the screen and destroy your ship if they make contact on the way. You can dig up to five holes per game in the surface of the planet. The crabs will fall into these if they come across them and immediately fill them in.

Alien Break-In itself is extremely well-written, very fast and smooth and offers a display mode and a sound-off option. I feel it may pall after many plays, however, as at the higher levels (there are 8) it is just too fast to test either skill or speed of reaction.