The trouble with games like this is that they're well, so, totally average that it's a real headache trying to come up with something new to say about them.

Certainly the plot doesn't exactly grab the imagination by the short and curlies. You're an ace crack super Condor fighter pilot, whose task is to save the world from the invading alien craft. You've got four lives in which to do it. Snore.

The game kicks off with an alien attack on what is supposedly New York. Well, OK - it's got a few skyscrapers, and as far as us Limeys are concerned that's probably good enough. Anyway, coming out of the blue sky with its puffy white clouds, and zooming in over the winding country road and green pastures, are lots and lots of aliens, flying saucers, shuttle craft, knobbly objects and funny things which open and close.

Your Condor fighter zips back and forth along the bottom of the screen, zapping away like all those ancient Space Invader games. The trick is to hit the baddies before they start dropping bombs, otherwise you're caught in a snowstorm of missile which is impossible to avoid. Sure, you can put your shields up by stabbing away at the space bar, but shield power is soon used up, and in any case it's difficult moving the joystick, pressing the fire button and holding down the space bar. It's not much easier if you opt to use the keyboard.

So, best thing is to sit in the centre of the screen, firing like mad, and remembering to keep an eye on the temperature level. If your weapons overheat from all that blasting, they'll temporarily seize up.

When you've cleaned up the Big Apple, your craft enters the hypersonic corridor. This greets you like an old friend - that ever-distant mountain range, the flickery landscape rolling beneath you, the rows of obstacles you're meant to navigate between. Ah, nostalgia.

The flashing bands of colour are apt to give the eyeballs a bit of a pummelling, but fortunately this sequence is soon over with, and there follows a brief respite where you can use the credits so far awarded to replenish your shield and energy levels.

Phase two depicts an attack on some kind of jagged lunar landscape with a river flowing through it and a jet black sky. Perhaps it's meant to be Pittsburg... The aliens come in different shapes and sizes now, but are mostly up to the same old tricks again, and your tactics are likely to be similar too. There are more phases after this one.

That about wraps it up. Pretty uninspired graphics, stationary backgrounds, limited sound effects and squeaky disco music over the opening screen, a number of different but actually very similar levels - yeah, just what you'd expect from an average cheapo shoot-'em-up.

Probably some bright kid's first attempt at a professional program, right? Wong. The credits read: (c) 1987 Odin Computer Graphics.

Odin? Weren't they the guys who gave us Nodes Of Yesod and Arc Of Yesod, and...

No, couldn't be.