Gold conversion travelled well

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It's time to get your tin hats out and lead the assault on the enemy territory in Beach-Head, from U.S. Gold.

This is one of the first conversions of their legendary Commodore 64 software, and it's great...

As the game begins, you are presented with a map ofthe area. By moving the cursor which represents your forces, you can select one of two opening scenarios.

In the first you must guide your fleet through a narrow channel which is mined and is constantly criss-crossed by enemy torpedoes.

You score for every ship successfully negotiating the channel, but you inevitably lose a few ships.

The second option is to skip this section and proceed with a full complement of 10 ships to the anti-aircraft game. This part of the game is great fun - enemy aircraft dive at your ship with guns blazing.

As they approach, they increase in size and detail. You now take on the role of gunner, moving the gun up, down, left and right, pumping out shells at wave after wave of fighters.

Speed and accuracy are essential here, as with each hit from the enemy your damage points increase.

Each time the total reaches 20 damage points you lose another ship.

The enemy planes defeated, their fleet now comes into play. Once again you are a gunner, but this time the battle is ship to ship.

My first attempts at lobbing shells at silhouettes of enemy vessels were disastrous.

I then spotted a small notice on the display informing me of how long or short my last shot was - aren't computers wonderful? Having survived this melee, the surviving ships head for the beach and land their cargo of tanks - the number of tanks landed being proportional to the number of surviving ships.

The tanks must be guided through a tortuous maze of tank traps and gun emplacements.

Finally they reach their target - a huge gun mounted on top of a hill. The hill is protected by numerous guns which must be eliminated before the large gun is destroyed.

The graphics are excellent, and the fact that your performance on each level determines your fire-power on the next is a great idea.

Let's hope we see many more U.S. Gold conversions in the future.

James Riddell