Screenshots:
 

Instructions:

The year is 2390 and a fleet of space freighters are conveting a cargo of battle and security droids (robots) to assist in fighting the Trimorg empire. The idea of the game is that the fleet have had their droids taken over by an unknown force. The droids then killed all the human crews. Your job is to guide a small remote control droid (the influence device) which has been beamed aboard one of the now hostile ships, and clear each deck of enemy droids.

Your inadequate weaponry rules out simply trying to blast everything - you wouldn't last more than a few minutes. What you can do though is use the aptly named influence device to temporarily take over the hostile droids and use them to blast the others.

Control
Moving your droid about is entirely straightforward, but some confusion may be experienced initially when attemtping to execute other functions.

Firing - Hold the fire button down and then move the joystick in the direction you wish to fire.

Influencing - Hold down your fire button (with the joystick centred) and after a moment you will see an electro-sparky-influency thing emerge from your droid. Now keep the button depressed and attempt to collide with your intended victim. After a moment or two of contact, you will enter the Transfer game where you and the droid you are challenging must fight for control of the droid's CPU.

The Transfer game
The Transfer screen shows a vertical column, in the middle of the screen, split into 14 different sections. Initially these are set to alternating colours, red and yellow for instance. You will have a few seconds to decide which side you wish to play from. Look at the horizontal wires leading from either side of the screen to the different CPU sections. You have a limited amount of pulsars (bullets) that you can fire down the wires thus changing the effected sections to your colour. Usually one side
is preferable to the other. If you look carefully at the wires you'll see there are several different types:

Splitters - Power splits into two or three paths, thus affecting multiple CPU sections. These are good!

Joiners - Power must arrive at both inputs to allow power through.

Auto-pulsers - Once activated they will continue to produce power and cannot be affected by your opponent.

Terminators - Power cannot pass through and is wasted.

Colour-switchers - Power is converted to your opponent's colour.

With practice you'll get to recognise the best side at a glance - mostly. After a few moments your alloted time to choose sides will be over and you must now fight for control of the CPU.

By moving the joystick up and down you can position your current pulsar on the various wires. When you come to a wire you wish to fire a pulsar along, tap the fire button. Use your pulsar's carefully, you only have a limited number - and remember the weaker your droid, the fewer the pulsars you have, so don't expect too much success if you try mixing it with the most powerful droids when you are currently occupying a cleaning droid.

As with choosing your side, the duel sequence runs to a strict time duration, so don't run out of time with several unfired pulsars.

The Transfer ends in one of three ways.

Victory - Well done, you now own that droid.

Defeat - Transfer rejected, if you were already in a droid you're back to the influence device, if you were in the influence device, its game over.

Deadlock - You and the droid scored 7 sections each so its re-match time.
 

Remember, no transfer is permanent. The droid will eventually reject you, destroying itself in the process. Look for the energy meter at the top of the screen which also shows your maximum potential power - should you fully re-charge. Yes, there are re-charging bays around the ship. You can also access the ships computers which you'll see on various desks about the ship. These provide valuable information to you. Oh, and you won't get far without using the lifts, which are activated with the fire button.

You now know enough to find out the rest - good luck, and watch out for the Space Raiders.