Alleykat is the sport of the future, a chance for a select few of the many millions of interstellar pilots to achieve fame and fortune. A chance to become a real hero.

Until recently interstellar sports have been in a state of complete chaos with no properly organised competitions. The only thing really considered a sport was the highly dangerous inter-planet racing events set up by the pirate TV stations. The live action often produced spectacular crashes and many pilots lost their lives. As the fatalitites grew the ratings soared.

The incidents grew and grew until the authorities were forced to clamp down following a terrible accident on the Jupiter race track. After an in-depth inquiry it was decided that the sport must be organised to make it safer for the competitors. So, eight 'official' race tracks were built to provide venues for the races.

The race tracks are custom built for space racing and comprise of a course built around the inner surfaces of a large space wheel. Each track has its own form of 'landscape', designed by different architects to give the races a variety of racing formats and the racers a variety of racing problems. A series of 'gravo craft' were also designed specifically to cause problems to AlleyKat racers during the competitions and add controlled thrills and spills to the sport.

The AlleyKat racing craft is swing-wing giving two advantages: when the wings are swept back extra speed can be gained, and when the wings are out the advantage is extra firepower. It's up to the racers to decide which facility suits their racing tactics best.

The game is at the very beginning of the fifth season and you play the role of an up and coming AlleyKatter. All your finances have been poured into the construction of your craft - consequently you have no money and have to earn enough cash to see you through the season. This can only be done by winning races.

The racing season is split into several galactice 'months', each month having progressively more difficult and challenging races. Naturally, the more difficult the race the bigger the prize. But as the prizes increase, so does the entry fee.

In the first month of the season the races cost nothing to enter, allowing successful racers to build up their accounts so they can enter the more expensive races later on in the season. This is the first of many problems: actually earning enough money to keep you racing. If you don't have enough money to enter the races later in the season your game terminates.

Each race is run over a vertically scrolling screen, just you versus the landscape and gravo craft. Most gravo craft are equipped with lasers, but some, like the feared KaterKiller, are totally maniacal and try and crash into anything that moves. Luckily, the AlleyKat race craft are fitted with lasrers which can be used to dispose of the marauding meanies, adding bonus points to your race kill tally.

By using a meny you can select which race you wish to enter. However, once you have raced or skipped races you can't go back and run them again. There are several different types of AlleyKat race formats, such as slalom, dodgem, demolition, survival, speed trial and endurance. Each race requires a different tactice to gain a big racing bonus - for example, in demolition races it's profitable to smash the landscape with your blasters. All these tactics have to be learned and it's useful to find out which races are best suited to your style, so you can enter them and stand more of a chance of winning.

To win a race you must complete a set number of laps. If you don't then you are awarded points for the different things you did during the race (amounts of kills, special bonuses, etc) but you don't get any money. There is only one way an AlleyKat racer can be brought to a halt and that's when it runs out of energy, either by crashing into landscape features or gravo craft.

Fortunelately, energy can be picked up by running over the 'E' symbols littering the landscape. The more symbols picked up the better the chances of surviving an accident. When the energy becomes low the ship flashes and an audio warning sounds.

AlleyKatters can enter solo or as a team. But the ultimate aim is to win the AlleyKat trophy, an artifact valued at 10.000.000 guineas which the winner can keep for a year.

The controls take some getting used to, but after a while they become natural. It's total concentration time as you try to suss out what is coming at you, what you're about to plough intom and what to shoot up. The graphics are really pretty, especially the crashing effect which is great and will no ddoubt be copied by everyone.

There are so meny innovations here, like the idea of laps (blast away in the first one, then get the old foot down) and all the different bonuses. This is no mindless shoot-em-up, it's the business and my tip for the Xmas number one.

No matter how many times I played it, it didn't turn me on. It didn't feel good and I never felt threatened or stimulated - previous Braybrook offerings have always had the opposite effect. AlleyKat isn't 'racy' enough to be a race game and hasn't the qualities of a good, fast asction shoot em up. The backgroudns are cluttered and restrict fast and exciting movements (unless you completely demolish the scenery - yawn), thus making the pace, on the whole, very slow.

The (essentially) small playing area doesn't help much either - although this is due to the size of the vertically scrolling screen, so it can't really be helped (unless the game scrolled horizontally). A slow game is all very well if there are a lot of interesting things to do, but in AlleyKat there is little 'active' variety to provide lasting entertainment. Adminttedly there are a multitude of different tracks, all graphically varied and offering a great deal of challenge.

However, I found the racing process too tedious to be worthwhiel. If there was less detail then the race tracks would look to sparse - at present they look good but don't work well. I'm disappointed with AlleyKat, although to be fair to Mr Braybrook such innovative 'acts' as Gribbly's Day Out and Paradroid are hard to follow. Still, AlleyKat is a fairly mediocre game - especially by Braybrook standards - with a little to it other than some very pretty graphics and impressive special effects.

The main ship sprite is great (especially the little landing lights which blink on and off during the game) and the gravo craft sprites are absolutely superb. The title screen is dead pretty with truly excellent Atari-esque effects, but the music is a bit iffy. The in-game effects are great, although they do tend to be rather reminiscent of other Braybrook games at times.

I found AlleyKat incredible addictive and returned to it time and time again for another go - you just want to keep going! If you want a superlative game which offers speedy and immensely addictive gameplay along with a hint of strategy, then look no further than this ace program.