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The evil demons of Iccus have risen to give the heavenly a bit of a bad time (plenty of fire and brimstone, eternal darkness and the like), so it's time for a shining angel (named Wor) to pick up his wings and his finger-mounted death cannons and give these god-forsaken devil-spawn something to think about.

In this all-action horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up, our angelic hero travels six stages of blasting action, doling out divine retribution to the damned with a variety of extra weapons. But caution must be exercised! Two bastions of darkness have been placed in each stage - one midway and one at the end of the level, and they're not very happy with your aggressive antics to say the least...

Wor's first foray into demonic territory is hampered by the fact that his weapons are pretty ineffective and he isn't that fast either. These icons help make a difference...

1. Feather Increases Wor's speed. Up to four feathers can be collected for top speed!

2. Blue Crystal Increases the power of the blue weapon, to a maximum of five times.

3. Red Crystal Adds to the power of the angel's red weapon. Five crystals is the limit.

The landscape is dotted with icons with which the angel can switch between his weaponry.

1. Blue The blue crystals fire a short way behind Wor giving adequate rear fire before shooting off in front to destroy any minions ahead.

2. Yellow The red and blue crystals are used for this weapon, which fires both in front and behind of our hero.

3. Red Draws on the red crystals and emits front-firing photons.

Along the path to the demons' destruction, various scrolls can be collected in order to cause yet more havoc to the marauding monsters. Collect the scroll more than once before selecting and the weapon is powered-up further!

1. Magic Missiles These homing missiles fly about for a while before choosing a target and destroying it!

2. Ground Attack Bolts are fired that run missile-like along the ground until they meet their target. A powered-up weapon sends missiles flying across the top of the screen as well.

3. Thunderbolt A front-firing version of the lightning bolt. Devastation guaranteed!

4. Energy Ball A nice defensive weapon. Sends energy balls flying around the screen, destroying all in their path.

5. Lightning Bolt Angels loiter around the top of the screen, and can be used to lightning blast a vast proportion of the screen.

6. Shield Protects our hero from several hits.

7. Multiple Fairies encircle our hero and fire out multiple death-bolts.

8. Wildfire Once selected, turns all of the angel's fire into larger, more powerful wildfire.

The game concept is remarkable only in the fact that it's exactly like virtually every other horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up - blast everything, power-up, beat end guardian, but it's packed with playability and sports some stunning graphics.

The main sprite is a bit crummy, but some of the multi-layer parallax scrolling backgrounds, special effects and end-of-level baddies are absolutely superb.

The extra weapons aren't amazing, but for fast action, excitement and, most important of all, a highly addictive challenge, this takes some beating.

Thunderforce 3 has the most amazing visuals, Hellfire has playability dripping in copious quantities from the cartridge, Gynoug, or Wings Of Wor as it'll be called when it's officially released over here, manages to combine the two.

The graphics are great with some of the most original Megadrive graphics around and some pretty spectacular effects and the sound is top-notch too (stunning - if you listen to it through a pair of decent headphones).

Hellfire is slightly more playable, but if you're a shoot-'em-up junkie who has tired of that classic - check this out.

At present, this is only available from Megadrive software importers and is not officially available from Sega in this country.

This means that the game will work fine on Megadrives that have been imported from Japan, but will not work on official UK Megadrives unless you have a Japanese games adaptor (available from mail order import companies) or your machine has been modified (which we do not recommend you do as this invalidates your warranty)

Presentation 89%
A great mythical feel to the game and loads of options to tweak as well.

Graphics 93%
Stunning effects, original design and brill end-of-level bosses. A large variety as well in all six levels.

Sound 93%
Get up and get down to the groovy tunes and thrill to the spot-on effects!

Playability 90%
Great power-ups, nice responsiveness and literally tons of enemy filth to wipe out!

Lastability 84%
A challenging game or normal level. If you can beat that, try the hard or hyper-level games!

Overall 88%
Okay, so it's another Megadrive shoot-'em-up, but it's great fun to play and is well worth the dough. Go for it!