Many years ago, your ancestors constructed an ideal world. It was necessary to construct an elaborate defence system to 'keep out evil influences'. Now as the place has fallen into disrepair you begin to wonder whether this defence system was devised to keep you in. This is the scenario of Utopia from Pulser Software, a game so large that the disc version requires string space to be cleared down to ten bytes.

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The idea is that you should pilot your space ship through a maze, avoiding both solid objects and the pilotless kamikazi droid ships which steer a random course. Your ship is equipped with steering and laser only. There are five stages to complete, each of which presents its own special problem. Some are very long, so fuel is important; others are just plain difficult.

Graphics are quite good, if a little jerky. The droid ships do not visually explode - when hit they just disappear.

Personally I found it quite irritating being put back to the beginning of the current stage every time the ship was destroyed. Still, this is better than having your new ship materialise in the same place as the old one, only to be destroyed again. Speed is the key to this game and for this reason I would recommend that you use a self-centering/switch type joystick.

Overall this is a good game to play, which presents a real challenge.

Finally a kind word for those nice people at Pulser, I had a slight problem with Duncan which resulted in a peculiar stick response. Thinking it might be a software problem I took up the matter with Pulser. In spite of the fact that my hardware was at fault, a replacement disc was sent by return of post. Now that is what I call service, thanks guys. As it turned out they were right and Duncan is feeling much better now.