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2001. Things have gone horribly wrong again. A nuclear reactor has gone a little bit wonky and the surrounding wildlife decided it might be a good idea to skip a few stages of the evolutionary process and turn straight into mutant monsters.

Luckily, there's you to sort things out - you with your big gun and undying loyalty to truth, honesty and the violent way of life. Plonked onto the first screen, you plug away at the enemies who swarm onto the screen in swarmy hordes, and you're not allowed to leave that screen and scroll onto the next until all the enemies are daed. Sometimes you can pick up weapons canisters to give you sexy-sounding firepower like seekers (ooh) and bolt lasers (aah). And so you progress through the levels one screen at a time, jumping, firing and dying.

The background graphics are a really luvly lurid shade of red, and very detailed to boot. Mr. Hero runs and jumps satisfactorily enough, as do his foes, but they're not masterpiece sprites by any stretch of the imagination. The music's pretty darn good though - there are some brilliantly funky tracks.

Out of the ordinary, exciting, unusual and strange - none of these words describe Rubicon. The words run-of-the-mill, average, competent and uninteresting do, however. It's really not very inspiring, but you can't really criticise the way it's been programmed, just the idea (or lack of one) behind it. Strictly five-minute fodder.

1. Like a hundred other shoot-'em-ups - Z-Out, Frenetic and so on - it's bland, uninspiring and not worth two parts.