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Star Commando is for enthusiastic zappers of alien ships and blasters of space mines and meteors. As you stare down the fixed sights of your laser gun at the galactic pilots zipping haphazardly around you, (an effect partly dependent on we rookie pilots lurching about space) you will have little difficulty accepting the producer's claim that the use of machine code results in fast action. I had no hesitation in passing it to my seven year old son for a more authentic test flight.

After half a dozen frustrating attempts, not helped by the fact that the relationship between the scoring system and the pattern of events is not explained very well on the packaging (and is a bit difficult to sort out when playing), he began to come to terms with it, and soon had the rest of us reaching for the volume control.

The opposition appears in seven guises, variously located in sixteen sectors of the galaxy. The graphics are good but not exceptional, and the colour combinations used give fairly good clarity on a TV screen. Your only help, a mother ship, like the enemy, can be difficult to find because of faulty sensors, which add an element of chance to proceedings.

Our most experienced typist took to the keyboard but found the key combinations awkward, and soon returned to the joystick, whose action is much more in keeping with the game's format. Come to think of it, I would not want a group of hooked youngsters pounding the keys in search of the score sufficiently high to reveal the codeword to claim their Star Commando wings.