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As street vigilante Paul Kersey you've gotta have guts to relieve the street gangs and muggers of theirs. You take the role that Charles Bronson made famous, along with a pledge to rid the city of scum.

The city is displayed in 3D. You can point your man at any compass point then run him along the street screen in either direction firing past the punks who carry knives, machettes, guns, lead piping and choppers. You've got a choice of four weapons, including an automatic pistol, machine gun, rifle, sawn-off shotgun and bazooka, each of which has a limited amount of ammo. If one of the guns runs out of bullets or missiles it's discarded and you must enter buildings and find new weapons.

The buildings comprise of several rooms and offer opportunities to make bonus points. You can look out of a window onto the street, line your gun sight and blow away more villains. The points for window targers are almost double that of street shots, so it often pays to enter as many buildings as you can.

Always remember that the bad guys are the ones carrying weapons and not wearing blue uniforms. If you blow away a little old lady or pulp a policeman, points are taken away from your total and you could end up with a minus score. Once you've hit a policeman, you've clearly broken the law and they'll start to fire at you, although they'll mainly be concerned with shooting the punks. On occasions the little old ladies also get in on the vigilante act. They use their handbags, no doubt filled with bricks, to bash muggers over the head. Go to it, granny.

The streets also contain characters which confuse your line of fire. The prostitutes, for instance, raise their skirts in the hope that you'll pay more attention to them than to their bosses. You may think the men in white coats who walk on when you've blown away three or more punks are there to confuse you, but the opposite is true. They're there to pull the bodies off the screen, and a good job they do of it too.

You may think you're invincible with all that armour and a bullet proof vest to boot, but you can be killed by constant stabbing, hammering or shooting by gang members. The injury status display creeps slowly from green to yellow and then to red.

Despite the violent nature of Death Wish III, the game is technically excellent with brilliant graphics and a three channel soundtrack from the film's title music. Some of the screens show graphic gore and lewdness, particularly on the Commodore version, but no doubt others will pass judgement on this Gremlin title - probably without seeing it first. So, all I will say is that it's an excellent game which is shockingly realistic!