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If you've ever wondered what it would be like as an Airborne Ranger but never fancied the crewcut and fatigues, this could be your chance to catch up on your lack of experience.

See. there's a bit of a war going on, and the army need heavily armed strike teams and tank platoons to carry out daring raids on the enemy, thus demoralising them and cutting off supplies. But what with defence cuts and everything, your superiors can only afford to send one person in, and it's lucky old you.

Airborne Ranger is an eight-way scrolling shoot 'em up with quite a strong strategy element. Before each mission, you are flown over your target, dropping each of your three supply packs where you think they'll come in handy, before parachuting into the drop zone and preparing for battle. Your ranger must then run, walk, crawl, shoot and bomb his way to his target and shoot, destroy, sabotage or kidnap it, depending on his orders for that mission.

Mr Ranger sir has quite a large armoury at his disposal. As well as his trusty carbine, he is in possession of a limited supply of grenades, time bombs (with varying timers) and anti-tank rockets. Still, this often doesn't do him much good against machine gun nests and tanks, so stealthy infiltration is the order of the day.

Airborne Ranger is an interesting and diverting alternative to the swarms of platform games and , shoot 'em ups that generally comprise budget titles. The elements of strategy and stealth make the game a lot more involving than most, and the clear, detailed graphics do justice to the gameplay.

Label: Kixx Memory: 48K/128K Price: £3.99 Tape Reviewer: Alan Dykes

The amount of fiddling around on the keyboard for certain controls in Airborne Ranger can be annoying, but overall, once you get used to this, the game is worthy of your cash.