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The Tempest is one of Bill Shakespeare's naffer plays. It's also one of Atari's better arcade games from the golden days of Defender.

Possibly a classic, definitely a cult, it kept the author for one bereft of ten pence pieces and away from the bar. Of course, at home you don't waste lops and there's no bar (shame), but does it still have the Right Stuff?

Let's describe the game first. It's a bit like Space Invaders played down the insides of a crumpled cardboard box. Instead of the evil aliens (perhaps they're just lonely) marching down the screen to meet you, they advance up the sides of a long tube made from a set of lines receding into the far distance.

This tube, by the way, is a Hyperspacial Wireway, through which the good folks of the galaxy normally traverse. At the top you have your laser base or Zapper, which you guide around the circumference to pick off the oncoming nasties, the better to make the Wireways. According to the script, this Zapper is a remotely controlled pulsed plasma device mounted on two mechletric legs.

According to the screen, it's two green lines. But use your imagination.

And these nasties are numerous. There are Flippers (which look nothing like dolphins) which laconically head-over-heel in a spiral up the tube. Fuseballs whoosh at speed straight up to your end of the tunnel. Pulsars are hyperspacial vandals - you can't cross a line with a Pulsar hanging on it.

If hit Tankers split into two Flippers, or a spiralling FusebalL And then there's Spike, who whistles up the side looking for all the world (take you pick which one) like a single line.

In case this xenobiological hoard proves a little too much for you, you have up your spaceman's sleeve a Super-Zapper, which kills 99 percent of all known knasties. You've only got one of those every screen, so save them for when you really need them.

You really need them if something gets to the top of the tube. You can't shoot it then, you can't pass it and if it's moving, you're in trouble. The ol' Super-Zapper is just the answer.

The vital weapon in the conflict is you. Success depends completely on how fast you can spot the advancing hoards, how quickly you can flit from side to side, how well you can judge the order in which to mash the monsters to prevent them reaching home base. It's quite a task.

Once a tube is de-infested you are warped (especially if you read this) at unimaginable speeds to the next wireway in need of clearance. And so it continues, only faster, fiddlier and frantic-er.

This interstellar Rentakil is depicted in wireframe graphics. The original arcade version was vector scanned (like Asteroids), and the Amstrad version does its best to look identical, even down to the rotating letters and flexing messages. It sounds identical too, even with the torpid Handel churning away on attract mode.

If you've ever played Tempest, then be assured that this is pretty close to the real thing. If you haven't, but appreciate some above-average zapping, then check this out. Even William might have enjoyed it.

Tempest is a good game but as Liz kept reminding us it is not the same good game. There is no menu or starting sheet at the beginning. You don't fly down the tubes at the end of a sheet and worst of all you can't fire sideways. I kept on letting off my super zapper too early. Still I found it a good blast.

The more I played Tempest the more I liked it. Perhaps I expected too much before I started.

This conjures up memories of my evening class, learning Pascal. The course was enough to put you off structured languages for life - the best thing about it was the Tempest in the bar at the Poly.

It's surprising how good you can get on an eleven week course (at Tempest, not Pascal). It also shows how often micro versions of arcade games are a pale imitation of the real thing.

Arcade Tempest was fast and furious, this is fudged and fiddly. Nothing like the same game.

Wrists in good nick? Joystick wrought from solid vanadium? Don't need to sleep in the next week or so? Good. Then get hold of Tempest.

This is about as close to the arcade megagame as you'll get on any computer. It's not Electric Dreams' fault, but a joystick isn't as good as a trackball and it's too easy to release the Super-Zapper by mistake by pulling down on the stick. Nevertheless, it's a goodie, if you like that sort of thing.