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A secret passion of mine has been to experience the thrill and excitement of being in the cockpit of a Jet Fighter chasing marauding Mig fighters whilst protecting a plane full of passengers. This game simulates what I had in mind quite well.

The player represents the pilot in this 3D Jet Fighter Simulation where the object is to escort a Jumbojet on its flight path, through a sky infested with attacking Mig Fighters. Graphically, the pilot is presented with the view of the sky ahead and the panel of instruments in a cockpit. These two visual aids occupy the top and bottom of the screen respectively.

The joystick is the only means of controlling the pilot's manoeuvres, which include descending, climbing, banking left, right and firing. This causes the launch of the heat-seeking missiles and can only be effective if the targeting computer has locked onto the enemy by sounding an audible beep.

The instrument panel, at the bottom of the screen, consists of several devices to aid the pilot in navigating around the rather bland sky. This instrumentation includes an Artificial horizon which indicates the aircraft's flight path relative to the ground. The player can then see if the plane is either climbing, descending, turning left or right. There is also a compass and an altimeter which indicates the absolute distance from the ground. This being useful for locating the airliner as it gives a precise numerical readout.

To locate and destroy the enemy, there is a Radar scope, a relative altitude indicator and the ability to automatically lock onto the target while it is in range, so that the heat-seeking missiles can follow and destroy it, even when the enemy takes evasive action. The radar scope shows the pilot at the centre of the radar screen with the enemy as blips either above or below the central point, which shows the enemy to be either ahead or behind you.

A tip that I found to be very useful was that it is easier to destroy the enemy fighters by paying very close attention to the instrumentation rather than relying solely upon visual contact with the enemy.

As the oncoming fighters appear, you receive radio transmissions through beeps or synthesized speech which tell you when enemy planes are approaching, the condition of the airliner or when your fuel is getting low, as the game ends when either the airliner is seriously damaged or when your plane runs out of fuel.

The entire game is very well presented and extremely addictive. With the 3D views and the limited speech I would like to award it the following 5-star rating.