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After Combat Lynx, Durell games earned a reputation of taking three hours to play, and an obligatory university degree to comprehend the instructions. Not this one. This is a shooty-uppy game with some of the slickest graphics yet.

The opening sequence (once you're through with all the anti-piracy tosh) of your little gunship is breathtaking. So much so that it takes you a while to realise that the default playing option is via the keyboard, and you have to abort the game to select joysticks.

Things soon get moving, the space-station-cum-runway scrolls off and aliens resembling green sandwiches fly on in formation. Knocking off these is a piece of pizza, once you get used to moving the stick up and down instead of left to right. Most of the people I saw playing it turned the joysticks through 90 degrees.

Firing is fast and furious, it's possible to completely obscure the view ahead with bits of disintegrating alien. This is a bit of a problem, 'cos sometimes they sneak up on you unawares through the bits of savage sandwich filling and banners proclaiming "100 points".

At the end of the invasion of the sarnie-snatches is an automated docking sequence to sit through while you bandage the old trigger finger.

Stage two is completely different, but still viewed in perspective. Your character now plays the part of a creature that is not sufficiently unlike K9 for it to be pure coincidence. K9 moves along a maze-like pathway eating up flashing smarties, not entirely unlike Pac-Man. You don't seem to get much of a score for smarty nibbling though.

Some smarties are completely inedible to K9's electronic innards. The pattern these form is used in the third (and final) part. The baddies this time take on the shape of whole rounds of green sandwiches, appearing and disappearing at random in a psychedelic DNA-type spiral. You can toast these sarnes with K9's snout-laser, and gain points. Wot do points make? (Prizes?)

Soon the little countdown alarm flashes a la cheeping LED alarm clock. Now is the time for all good doggies to come to the aid of the third stage. Bad dogs can hang around and do some sandwich-blasting for a few extra points before legging it.

The third stage is a bit strange. K9 transmutes into a gobstopper, and has to push buttons in when they go yellow. Remember the bit about the inedible smarties? Well, that is the pattern you have to form on the buttons.

Difficult enough, so the sparkly thing that tails you round the board doesn't help a lot. You see, if you bounce him instead of a button, your gobstopper goes to that big sweetie jar in the sky. Not only that, but there's a time limit on it.

All in all, a very satisfying game. Part 3 is a bit dull, but parts 1 and 2 make up for it. Of course, if you complete it, you go round and round and round and...

The graphics on this ain't half bad, in fact they make it. If the thing wasn't in perspective, it would all be rather boring.

I never got to play it on a monochrome monitor, but I should imagine that the button colour changes will be a bit difficult to spot, bright green looking much the same colour as bright green and all.

This is a cross between Zaxxon and Crystal Castles. I found the space scenes a trifle dull, but the shooty Pac-Man bit was fun. As with any 3D game, the controls take some mastering.

The boxed scores look a bit comic and the explosions are pleasant, but there was nothing to get the adrenalin flowing. I tried the game on a green screen and the playability does suffer but with the contrast turned up it is still playable.

Since Arnold was born, software houses have complained about the 16K of screen memory being difficult to scroll. This shows in Sigma 7, the large objects, like your launch pad, scroll jerkily - not Durell's fault, more the mistake of attempting the impossible.

Zaxxon offers a height gauge and a shadow in the planet scenes. This is missing from Sigma 7, making it hard to judge your relative position. A bit samey.