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Most shoot-'em-ups set you down at the start of a hideous, twisting terrain and leave you to battle through wave after wave of aliens until you finally meet your maker. Even those that claim some kind of plot invariably have an unbelievably storyline. Phobia, however, is different in that the storyline has some relevance to your objective.

Lord Phobos has imprisoned the daughter of the Galactic President and is holding her captive on the surface of the Sun. Phobos has played on human phobias by surrounding the Sun with all manner of fearsome creatures designed to keep people away.

There are fifteen different planets situated in front of the Sun, inside each of these is a rare element which affords protection from the Sun and thus allows you to make an attack.

Nine of these have to be tackled in order to retrieve enough pieces of the special element to launch an attack on the Sun.

A display of the arrangement of planets allows you to select a route through the planets towards the Sun. The horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up section materialises once you get onto a planet.

Other active defence systems present on each planet mean that you need to collect space pods just to move between planets and track down those essential elements to increase the efficiency of your craft.

The game claims to use 32 colours on screen at once and judging by the smooth tone which runs at the top and bottom of the screen, they're there.

The creatures that you have to shoot have been well-drawn, with everything from spiders and snakes to dentists making up the different phobias. These are surprisingly large and soon occupy the vast majority of the screen. An end of planet alien also makes an appearance just to complicate matters.

With the lack of auto-firing and an accumulation of indestructible missiles this can soon make the whole affair a tumult of action.

Sound is limited to spot effets and is forgettable.

If there is a problem with Phobia then it is the difficulty factor. Surviving life on one planet is hard enough without contending with the other eight.

Since such large sprites are being manipulated and the ST is pushed into doing horizontal scrolling, which it has never been able to do too quickly, inevitably the action can be slow. This limits the addictive factor but you'll still find it challenging to play, particularly if you're a shoot-'em-up freak.