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Your name is Guy Manly, the roughest and toughest pirate in the galaxy, and your aim is to make crime pay in space. The 'council' have given you orders to hijack innocent space truckers and sell all the cargoes from them for a big profit. Not wanting to risk your neck by going out into space without knowing what's there, various mission simulators have been installed for you to practice on until you've earned enough points to get into the real thing. Have you got what it takes to satisfy the council and make yourself piles of dash? The first thing that hits you in Cosmic Pirate is the excellent presentation. The Byte Back logo wobbles up the screen at the beginning, and the layout of the whole game is good. The actual space fighting scenes remind me of Hunter's Moon, a Thalamus game on the Commodore 64 (ooo, swear words!), the graphics and way the ship is controlled are very similar.

The game isn't just shooting aliens that attack you occasionally. You can pop down onto planets and clear them of aliens for extra points, collect extra equipment to improve your ships capabilities and view data on each space truck before you attack it. All this is quite fun for a while.

Cosmic Pirate is a good shoot 'em up that will appeal to fans of this style of game. Others may find it a bit boring if they don't get anywhere after the first few goes.