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Spin the engine, jiggle those flaps, chocks away and let me take you back to the time when men were men, women were beautiful and the aeroplane was king. Everyone's heard of OutRun, the great arcade game, and this is the air version. Rich in '30s atmosphere and thrills and spills.

The game begins with a wicked title screen that looks like it's been lifted straight from an old newsreel, showing a crowd with your stubby flying fuel tank in the foreground. Slowly, colour fades in, Ragtime music plays, you see yourself seated tense in the cockpit and... they're off!

There are three different levels of play - Beginner, Expert and Ace - to choose from, each looking pretty much the same - there is only so much variation you can get in the sight of planes roaring over the desert after all - but with the speed of the ride and the tightness of the course changing dramatically.

Each level consists of four events that have to be completed in the given time, with a bonus being awarded for time left over, as well as giving you longer on the next event. Normally, you are just flying around a course while avoiding the other planes, but occasionally you get a shot at a special event which could be flying around poles, or coming in low and bursting a series of anchored balloons. You are asked to pop all thirty, but on the first few goes it is hard enough to take out one of them!

If you crash on one of the events - and this is quite hard to do as most mid-air collisions merely result in a slowing down and a loss of time - your plane splutters and starts to drop, a picture of you parachuting to safety appears and... Wham! Hold your breath... did you land between some young girl's legs (True!) or - and this is far more likely - in with the pigs?

Once you complete a level - four events - a presentation screen is displayed, but you have to do numerous levels to get the full rewards. This is, as you have probably guessed, a comparatively simple game, given life by the high standards of the well drawn and convincing graphics. Lacking laser blasts and a variety of very different backdrops, it relies on the addictive qualities of the very simple basic idea of the game to retain the interest.

What this means is it lacks the special touch that would make it stand out from the rest, and would probably do better as a budget title that at its current asking price. However, if we had a mark out of ten for atmosphere - the very nicely produced packaging adds to this too - Gee Bee Air Rally would probably come near the top of the heap.

The lack of reality about crashes, in the early stages of the games, you can zoom around with wild abandon, clipping the wings of other planes, swooping down on the course markers and [some text missing].

So to sum up, Gee Bee Air Rally has some great graphics, nice touches of humour, great music and sound. One could only want for a little more playability. However, an enjoyable game.