It's there. It's almost there. But a few silly, silly mistakes stop this from being a truly great game.

Spacewar 2000 has an enormous amount going for it. It's sort of a cross between Asteroids and Space War, that venerable coin-op of vector graphics and hilarious physics, where you had to blow up your opponent without being sucked into a black hole. The ST version boasts better ships, bounties so you can afford to buy better ships, and insurance so you can claim on the better ship you've just driven into the side of a large rock. It keeps the fully definable aspect of Space War, so you can toggle effects and obstacles to your heart's content.

Up to four players can take part. There are very silly options, such as turning on gravity between ships and asteroids. You get special weapons. Power-ups appear during the game. You can buy death bombs, so when you get blown up, laser beams or mines, or heat-seeking missiles burst from your exploding ship and revenge you on the opposition. Your score is broken down into percentage of shots fired to percentage of hits made. There are spaceports on the playfield that recharge your guns, billing you if you survive. It's exceptionally well-designed, and plays quite splendidly. Blasting your friends has never ben so much fun at so low a price: the version in distribution is the full game. The author is trusting in people to register for the principle of the thing. But.

You need at least one other person to play, as there are no computer ships. You are required to have another joystick, and the four-player mode, fairly obviously, needs an adaptor and two more joysticks. Why no keyboard option? At the lowest level, the game is over far too quickly, as you have so little armour. Fair enough, you can crank up the money available and buy the Ship From Hell, but you shouldn't have to. A bit more balance at the beginning would go down well, rather than having to go through manually and adjust things. In summary, an enormously playable game which just - just! - misses out on a very high score indeed.