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Picture if you can, a stone-deaf drunk chain-smoker with laryngitis and asthma, gargling barbed wire and desperately trying to cram a hedgehog into his vocal tract. That's Flyer Fox, one of the new "Tymac Talkies" - they're kidding, aren't they? - and sure enough it talks, but if it says anything important it's not in any language I understand.

This is a fighter simulation, after a fashion, the idea being to guide your "sleek jet fighter" through the skies, protecting a commercial Jumbo Jet from those *nasty* Russkies in their Mig fighters.

You are presented with a view from a cockpit window with a control panel along the bottom - altimeter, radar, that sort of thing. A strangled screech comes from the speaker and the action begins. A few blips appear on the radar, you swing round and suddenly something big and plane-like appears on the screen. You fire at it, "Gruuraagh... Grrrmmm ugh!", says somebody as the plane bursts into flame and you go down with it.

The frantic grunting coming from the speaker was trying to tell you you were shooting down the Jumbo, not clever. Next time around things are better, you get to be shot down without demolishing that which you're trying to protect.

After a while it becomes quite easy to control, enemy planes fly across the screen in "3D" and the horizon tilts nicely on the turn. There are some strange ideas about the art of language but the graphics are pretty neat and all things considered, it's quite a passable game.