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"Alert... Alert, Delta Base to Star Quest - Priority Despatch - Code Red... Code Red..." Thus begins Mirax Force - one of the best games to appear for a long time.

Your mission is to fly Star Quest, your super star fighter, over the gigantic alien mothership, destroying as much of the main superstructure as possible.

Your goal is to annihilate the ship's main reactor. This sounds straightforward, but isn't and it beat me.

As you attempt to destroy the mothership you are constantly buzzed by the defence fighters. These small craft attempt to eliminate you with monotonous determination - even if their missiles miss the enemy will ram you.

As well as avoiding the fighters, you must negotiate tall pylons, buildings and shadowed objects. This addition makes the game extremely taxing.

The inlay card outlines one of the features as very smooth bi-directional scrolling, but to the common mortal this means that the screen scrolls from left to right in a fashion very similar to Defender.

The graphics are superb, the colours expertly used and together they make a stunning display. Intricate design work adds to the overall quality and style and a nice feature is that every time you lose a life the colours change.

The sound effects are adequate but are lifted above the average by the digitised speech: On loading you are greeted with the message, "The battle begins...".

The credit for the qaulity of sound goes to 2-bit Systems' Replay add-on.

More speech can be heard as you play, and it is always as crisp and clear as the opening message.

The game has a one-player mode and uses a joystick plugged into port one. Its response is very sharp, and this is necessary because at times you have to turn sharply to avoid the buildings or defence craft.

Beware of too much acceleration or you'll soon find yourself in deep trouble. Mirax Force is well packaged and the inlay card carries some very nice artwork. The sound, graphics and superb scrolling complement each other superbly. My only reservation is that, at times, movement was so fast I had difficulty in telling what killed me.

Even though the gameplay is difficult it is addictive. Billed as the ultimate shoot-'em-up, with numerous levels featuring the very best of the Atari's graphic capabilities - I can only agree.