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Gremlin must be one worried software company. It's only had the licence for the Mask range of toys, and cartoon series, for a few months and the agents of that high-tech law enforcement organisation have started to disappear.

Matt Trakkar, inventor, strategist and leader of the group, suspects that the villainous Venom organisation is behind the kidnappings which are further attempts to destabilise world peace and may signal the start of a massive global crime spree. Your mission is to track down the missing agents and destroy as many of Venom's cohorts as possible.

There's not much you have to go on. The agents have disappeared into a vortex which has taken them into one of four fantasy worlds. Don your mask, the trademark of your organisation, and remote controller of all the weapons, communications and equipment at your disposal, and take to the skies in your Thunderhawk pursuit craft.

Once you've found and entered the Venom vortex you're jumped on one of four fantasy worlds - Boulder Hill, Prehistoric, Far Future and Venom Base. You'll find two of the six agents in all but the first of those, and at Boulder Hill you have to find your own mask before you can start your rescue mission.

The landscapes are finely detailed and the terrain is natural enough until you come across the five symbols which mark the locations of useful objects. There are bombs and repair kits for your Thunderhawk, as well as security keys, scanners and masks which'll help you to locate your missing buddies. Just scoot through them to pick them up and they're entered on your ship's control at the bottom of the screen ready for use.

To find an agent you've got to go through a search and pick-up sequence which is unnecessarily complicated but which lengthens the game. First you've got to pick-up a scanner and find the four keys, amongst many, which will activate it. Once found, pick up the agent and go in search of his mask and collect it before going off in search of the next agent.

Each of the four locations contains a scattering of deadly fauna, aliens, monsters and high-technology weapons - all aimed at you. Boulder Hill is sweet with its helicopter bombers, jeeps, tanks, boulders and freight trains, compared with Prehistory which hurls Pterodacytls, Snapping Turtles, dinosaurs, volcanoes and lava at your Thunderhawk. The Far Future, with Black Holes, Gun Emplacements, radioactive waste, and UFO mothership is no better, while the final scene, Venom Base, throws everything at you in a last-stand effort to protect its villainous dynasty.

It's unlikely that you'll get through Mask easily, even if you've an arcader, but Gremlin has made sure that there are plenty of ways to knock up high scores, apart from finishing the game with all agents safe and well rescued.

Gremlin could have moulded the game around any old shoot-'em-up style - an accusation recently levelled at Domark and The Living Daylights - but it didn't. Instead it's paid attention to all the attractions of the licence and used them to transfer non-stop cartoon action onto the computer screen.

I despaired of seeing a good cartoon/toy licensed conversion when US Gold released its over-hyped He-Man games.

Thankfully, with the release of Mask, I wasn't in despair town long. A great cartoon and a very good game.