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Here's a surprise! After a seemingly endless stream of arcade conversions, US Gold have come up with a game with absolutely no coin-op connections at all. Dream Warrior has a really strange and complicated scenario, so turn on your brain and read on.

The time is the future (Gosh!) and in an attempt to put an end to messy physical wars with lots of blood and intestines all over the place, the FOCUS Federation (Boo Hiss) have developed a system whereby they can plant Demons into people's dreams to kill them while they sleep.

To prevent this Nocturnal necroromancing, a team of scientists called collectively ASMEN (!) found a way to combat the evil Dream Demon. Unfortunately, FOCUS sussed out their plans and planeted Demons in their dreams to kill them, and the only way to save them is for you, the Dream Warrior, to enter the heads of the scientists and flush out the Demons.

The game is basically a sort of quasi-sideways shoot-'em-up with strategy elements built in. The scientist head interiors are depicted as a long, horizontally scrolling playing area that takes up about 25 screens. You, as the Dream Warrior (clad stylishly in green motorbike leathers) run around the dream blowing away dream demons with your laser rifle. The nasties come in various colours and shapes and fly past you at speed hoping to collide with you and knock your energy level down a bit.

Every time you kill a nasty, he leaves behind a little coloured globule that can be picked up, the item you gain when doing so being dependent on what colour the globule is. Red globules, for example, boost your energy level, while grey globules allow you to access the lift and move between the two available floors. By picking up a green globule it's possible to journey to other dreams (there are three in all) via the dream hoppers, and blue globules are used to slowly put together a picture of the scientist whose head you occupy.

If you succeed in managing to complete all three scientist's portraits, you can progress to the final section where you do battle with the ultra-nasty megademon, Ocular. There's also a strange 'interlude' section where you hop on board a strange-flying Suzuki known as a Sloop (don't worry I don't understand it either!) and have a punch-up with huge green monster mateys called Wryms.

US Gold must be congratulated on producing a game that's original both in terms of scenario and concept - it's something of a first for them! - as well as some extremely nice graphics and sound, which deserve a mention all on their own. The Dream Warrior sprite has been very well defined and animated and is surprisingly large for a game of this type, although he doesn't actually seem to be there, instead he looks like he's floating about. The backdrops are very pretty, even if they aren't original (yet more bas-relief) and scroll smoothly enough. The Wryms have been drawn well, but unfortunately they're a bit big for the poor old C64 to handle elegantly and the end result is a little jerky.

Sound is good too, albeit sparse, with a pleasant soundtrack on the title screen and reasonable in-game effects.

Unfortunately, all these excellent aesthetics aside, there isn't much gameplay there, and after the initial novelty of running around blasting aliens and collecting globules has worn off, there's little more to keep you coming back, which is a shame. Some excellent graphics and sound have been wasted on a mediocre game.