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I realise this probably amounts to treason but the first time I recall seeing Thrust, it was running on a BBC. Since then it was deemed good enough to grace the C64, and has now been given yet another lease of life.

An odd sort of game, really. Pathetically simple, nothing to shout about graphicwise, no sound that I can remember, and yet totally addictive. Compulsive, even.

Ubik, renowned headbanger and C64 synth man, has taken Thrust and jazzed it up considerably.

Although you may never have seen, or heard of, Thrust, you'll probably recognise bits of it from other games. The game is based around the classic zero gravity theory of spaceship animation programming. Which is to say that your rocket ship has but one thruster, conveniently situated at the rear of the craft. A blast on the thruster sends you forward, or up, or down, or wherever your nose happens to be pointing at the critical moment.

Panic sets in when you get around to thinking about stopping. The only way to do this, of course, is to turn yourself around until the thruster is pointing in the opposite direction to that in which you are travelling and apply the appropriate degree of reverse thrust.

Appropriate being the operative word here. Novice pilots will experience the intergalactic equivalent of the L-driver's 'kangaroo hop'. Veteran pilots will cack their pants in mirth as you head, at near light speed for the left hand side of the screen, only to turn, thrust and 'elastic band' it back where you came from.

Once you get the hang of the basic manoeuvres, you can actually start playing the game. This involves thrusting your way around a cavernous landscape filled with leftover central heating pipes. Some nifty thrusting is required to get through the narrower crevices and into the nooks, where you will find some square things.

When you land, or pass over a square thing, the clock starts to count down, and until it reaches zero you have unlimited firepower with which to blast the various nasties. Here, of course, you run into the second dilemma of zero-grav flight. Which is that the best position for shooting at something is inevitably the one which sends you crashing into the rocks very fast. Once again, the gut reaction, more often than not, is to turn through 360 degrees and whack on the thruster, so that you hit the wall with twice the force that had you done absolutely nothing. Practice, practice...

When you've got to grips with blasting the nasties - worms, revolving stars, squid things, skulls, etc - you can get down to the real business, that being the transportation of orbs to the planet surface using a grappling hook. I'll leave you to imagine the problems of coping with an orb on a grappling hook in zero gravity.

Each orb brought to the surface is miraculously transformed into a piece of ghettoblaster. When you build the whole thing, you can start again from scratch - with a new set of monsters and rotating, bouncing jumping things.

Thrust II is still great fun and is enhanced enormously by Ubik's music, 'cute' sprites - the ship looks like a cross between a Domestos bottle and a wine gum - and nice touches like the high score table of "Today's Grooviest Thrusters".