At last Archimedes owners have a game of mindless violence! Quazer is a souped up 'zap the aliens' game, along the lines of Firetrack: you fly your ship over a scrolling landscape, destroying as many of the ground installations as you can while dodging and shooting the alien onslaught.

You progress through the eleven levels by shooting a certain number of red diamonds on each level; if you don't shoot enough you lose a life, but if you do you're given the password to the next level.

There is a range of different aliens, some of them familiar-looking mouse - pointers and floppy disc icons, for example. Some swoop down while others perform complex loops, and there is the occasional one that homes in on you. Of course the aliens don't just fly about, they also bombard you. To make life even more fun, it is possible to crash into bits of the scenery.

The scrolling is very even, except during an explosion, when it hiccups slightly. None of the sprites are animated, but they all move very smoothly no matter how many are on the screen. The instructions scroll up the screen, Star Wars-style, accompanied by a pleasant tune.

The collision detection seems a bit one-sided and quite often bullets emerge from slightly to the right of the gun. The scrolling message on the title page also manages to take a piece of the border with it. The game gets too hard too quickly, but out of the small pool of Arc games, Quazer is definitely the best. Although not as graphically impressive as some, it is fun to play.