Fight For Survivors

As one of the army's ace helicopter pilots you have been volunteered for Airlift, Superior Software's highly dangerous mercy mission.

Enemy tanks are attacking installations on the front lines and it is up to you to rescue as many survivors as possible and deliver them to a Red Cross hostel.

When travelling at high speed your chopper fires missiles horizontally and when travelling slowly it drops bombs.

As you patrol the battlefield you may bomb the tanks before they shell tho buildings and collect the odd point or two in the process.

Once a building has been attacked you must land the chopper near to the ruins, still fighting off the tanks, and wait for the survivors to leave what shelter they had found and climb aboard.

The scrolling of the landscape is very smooth, with background and foreground objects travelling at different rates, giving depth of field and a 3D effect.

As with many of Superior's games it is attention to detail that is the program's strong point. The survivors of Airlift are an excellent example.

While being no more than very tiny stick men they have been animated in such a way as to express character. When running to the helicopter they will beckon to their comrades, pointing and waving in your direction.

Once the helicopter will take no more passengers il is time to head back to the Red Cross hostel, touch down gently, and collect vast numbers of points.

The tanks themselves provide few problems, and once the gentle landing has been mastered the game is not too taxing.

However as your score begins to approach the 20.000 mark a new adversary appears on the screen, the auto-gyro.

These little babies are quick, manoeuvreable and deadly, and from this point onwards you can forget the tanks because you have got real problems.

The game combines characteristics of both Defender and Rocket Raid to produce maybe not an original but certainly a very well written and enjoyable game.

Jon Revis