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Fortress is an excellent version of the arcade dazzler where you pilot a plane over a hostile landscape, shooting everything in sight before it gets you.

It's really a 3D version of the Rocket Raid genre and represents the best so far in the use of hardware scrolling. The ground is blue, and on it is the shadow of your own craft - which is the only clue to your height above the ground. Fuel is in very short supply, so you must shoot up the enemy supplies to increase your own stocks (?).

The enemy appears in the form of rockets launched from silos, planes which sit around waiting for you to come to them, ack-ack batteries and various solid obstacles such as walls.

Controls are well laid out, with options for joystick, freezing the action, sound on or off, and even to alter which keys control what.

Loading presented problems, however. First a disc loaded would run, but then the screen scrolled and wouldn't stop. A cassette copy loaded well, but then crashed after a few goes. Two out of two duff copies is a bit off. Pace has got a winner here, and it's a pity the loading problems delayed my review, and stopped me getting too far into it.

Fortress is a reflex game, but a rather superior example. If you fancy yourself as a Bobby Dazzler of the keyboard, you'll want it.