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X-Out? A piece of cake. Anyone could have annihilated Alpha Centauri's satellite. It was hardly worth bothering with victory celebrations, but success is success.

The population of Alpha Centauri itself however, chose to see your actions in a different light. Long range scanners have revealed intense activity on the surface of their home planet, and it looks like an attack is imminent. Federation HQ recommends a first strike. And guess which swell-head has been chosen as pilot?

Z-Out is a six-level horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up in which your mission is to destroy Alpha Centauri. It follows a standard formula: each level features its own unique landscape and aliens, and each is guarded by a mother alien, with a sprinkling of huge aliens throughout. Your craft can be bolstered with progressive weaponry and shields, and extra lives and secret bonuses are available to pilots skilled enough to find them.

Rainbow Arts seems to be able to produce quality shoot-'em-ups as a matter of course. X-Out, Turrican and now Z-Out all feature smart visuals, excellent music and sound effects, and intelligently conceived variations on shoot-'em-up clichés. Take the Outriders, for example - normally they just sit above and below your ship. In Z-Out, you can place them just about anywhere to suit the situation.

There isn't much of a scenario, and it doesn't really need one: it's an unpretentious blaster with few in-game presentation frills (a high score table and a two simultaneous players option). This is only to its benefit however, since loading is so much quicker, and you can play without having to suffer interminable death and start sequences.

Gameplay has been well thought out: apart from a range of genuinely useful weapons, secret bonuses and extra lives, there are a host of horribly devious alien formations, which don't simply wander on screen asking to be hit - this could make it mite tough for first timers. Even so, when you add the fabulous backdrops (taking in influences from R-Type and Alien on the way) and punchy soundtracks, you get another blaster which will prove irresistible to shoot-'em-up fans.

Out at the same time for the same price, ST Z-Out will only suffer marginally in the colour and sound departments. Gameplay should remain the same.

Bad news, folks. There will be no Z-Out on the PC. Not now, not never.