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Got from the good ol' USA comes Rescue On Fractalus, a superb new space shoot-'em-up from Epyx and Lucasfilm Games.

The game has long been awaited - in its early form it was called Behind Jaggi Lines - but had been help up for release owing to legal problems.

Since I had heard many superlatives being bandied around about its quality, I was anxious to secure a copy as soon as it became available.

Thanks to the fast and efficient services of Software Express of Birmingham, a review copy thudded on to my doormat within hours of the game's release for the UK. Rumours of its excellent are well-founded - Fractalus is a humdinger.

The Jaggies, with whom you are at galactic war, have dug themselves in on an inhospitable planet called Fractalus. The war is not going well for you. Many of your Ethercorps pilots, including some ace officers, have found Fractalus a little beyond their capabilities and have crashed on to the planet.

You can't blame them. The terrain on Fractalus consists of wild, rugged mountains, craggy peaks and ridges, and deep canyons. The atmosphere is no less harsh - thick cyanitric acid which will dissolve a standard issue flight suit within minutes.

And as if that weren't enough, Fractalus rotates so fast that daylight only lasts for nine minutes. Barely worth getting the deckchairs out.

Your mission is to rescue as many of your stranded colleagues as possible. As long as they stay inside their marooned single-manned fighters, they are safe. Once they venture out into the atmosphere they have only seconds to live.

The game begins with a breath-taking title screen of your mothership, one of the most impressive introductory screens I have ever seen!

Incidentally, there is a Commodore 64 version of the game available with a different title screen. The Atari screen leaves the Commodore version standing, thus confirming what we always knew about Atari software - only the best for the best!

You start inside your fighter, aboard the mothership. The display shows the forward view through the main window of your cockpit and below it a detailed instrument panel.

The panel gives helpful visual and aural information and warnings on such things as compass bearing, wingtip clearance from solid rock - handy for canyon flying - altitude, thrust, artificial horizon, energy, shield and air lock activation, range to stranded pilot, number of enemies destroyed and number of pilots you are expected to rescue and have actually rescued.

There's more. An altimeter shows both the altitude of the terrain and your altitude above it. A long range scanner will pick up a pilot's emergency beacon and display its position.

An enemy lock-on indicator lets you know how near you are to getting blasted by alien fire while a targetting scope helps you to draw an accurate bead on enemies and downed pilots.

This whole array appears daunting at first but it is very clearly and nearly set out and turns out to be quite simple to assimilate and interpret.

So much for the technical stuff, now to the action. Under automatic control, your ship is hurled along a tunnel at hyperspeed and descends towards Fractalus. From then on, you're in control.

Through your cockpit window you'll see a bright yellow heaven (must be all that cyanitric acid) and a skyline of ominous brown crags.

Controlling your ship is mainly a matter of joystick movement, while increases and decreases in speed are handled by the left and right arrow keys.

Any Jaggi gun emplacement shows up as a small green dome on top of a peak, firing bursts of green rays at you. You can take evasive action or try to knock it out.

A cross-hair sight will be overlaid on the scene whenever the enemy is near. To blow a Jaggi stronghold off the mountain, you must line up the cross-hair and fire one of your torpedoes.

A stranded pilot is shown as a flashing green beacon on the surface of Fractalus. Watch for a blip on your long range scanner and fly low towards the pilot. Once near enough, you have to land your craft by pressing L. When down, pressing S turns your systems off and you will be told whether or not you are close enough to rescue the pilot.

If you are not, you'll just have to take off again and land a bit closer. When you're near enough, you'll see the pilot leave his ship and toddle towards you. When you hear him knocking on the door, you must open the airlock - press A - and you'll be rewarded by the sound of him stumping up the stairs.

Should you be in a malicious mood, try leaving the pilot outside. He'll start to knock more urgently, then more weakly until at last you hear him topple over. The cyanitric air has got him, you rotter!

From time to time, a beeping sound will alert you to the presence of the mothership. Pressing B fires your boosters and returns you there where you'll receive replenishment and, if you've rescued your quota of pilots, move to the next level.

When you begin a game, you can elect to start at any sixteen levels, although the game progresses way beyond these. When you complete a level, you continue at the next higher one but if you're really feeling tough or want more bonus points you can skip up to three levels at a time.

Levels 1 to 3 are for training - no sign of the Jaggies on level 1 and just a handful on levels 2 and 3. On levels 4 and above, the Jaggies are more numerous, pugnacious and accurate, and are joined by kamikaze flying saucers.

Level 16 has the Fractalus nine-minute day coming into play so prepare for some night flying. You won't see anything out of the window and must use just your instruments and nerves.

A demo mode is provided and there are some other interesting little wrinkles to the game, including one where you inadvertently pick up an alien instead of a pilot. I'll leave the pleasure of discovering these to you.

Sound effects, including the stirring theme tune, are first rate. The graphics are clean and clear and although the solid mountainous terrain is all coloured the same (brown with black ridges), the exceptionally fast, multidirectional scrolling more than compensates.

Rescue On Fractalus with its mixture of simulation and arcade elements is a top-notch game, packed with action and excitement. It will hook you from the word go and keep you coming back for more. Cost of the disc is £34.95.