Of all the compilations so far I have to say this one is the most interesting. All three of the games are real legends from the C64's past - and we're talking 1983 for Beach Head. So how has the test of time affected this Access trilogy?

Beach Head is set in WWII with American forces going all out to capture the Japanese fortress Kuhn-Lin. Your invasion begins with a number of ships, each carrying a tank. What's nice with all three games is the sense of carrying a steadily depleting combat force through the varied levels. It's realistic and very involving.

Here your first combat scene is a crude screen where your fleet's ships must be individually guided past mines and torpedoes. More impressive is the famous aircraft attack scene where you use your ship's guns to bring down attacking enemy planes. Providing you don't lose all your ships, you then turn your guns on the enemy fleet - you must judge the distance of the ships and the trajectory angles to take them out. Then you can land your tanks, which must be taken through a simplistic, horizontally-scrolling battlefield.

When you get to the end, the view switches to a first-person perspective of the enemy fortress. As the enemy gun turns you must hit a series of targets.

It's all a single load, which is as well since none of the graphics are at all outstanding, although sound is nice. Gameplay is very simplistic, but all the levels interlock well and there's a two-player mode where players take turns at each level. It's not going to provide a huge amount of entertainment but it's diverting enough for a few hours.

Beach Head II's scenario is that in 1947 an evil dictator known as the Dragon has captured some US troops: Commander Stryker leads the response. This makes for a great simultaneous two-player head-to-head confrontation. The first battle has Player 1 (Stryker) dropping paratroopers who must then be advanced past three walls, while under attack by a gun controlled by Player 2 (Dragon). If all the troops are shot Player 2 has won, but usually a get through.

Now the scene switches to the escape of Allied prisoners. Player 1 controls the gun turret this time and Player 2 has the use of tanks, half-tracks and mine-throwing soldiers to kill them. Next, it's all aboard the helicopters for a Xevious-style dash through the Dictator's defences with him controlling tanks aiming to bring you down.

The final scene consists of the two opponents on either side of a river throwing knives at each other. It's a nice finale to the only game here originally reviewed by Zzap! (90%, Issue 4). Of course, there's also a good one-player mode and, once again, the graphics are on the small side, but they're well done and there's some brilliant sampled speech. Beach Head II alone makes the pack worth getting.

The final game, Raid, was originally titled Raid Over Moscow and caused a massive fuss in 1984. The Reaganesque scenario is that Russia has launched a nuclear attack and America's SDI forces must respond. When a missile is launched, you should send a fighter or two to take out the launch silo. Pressing space takes you to the famous launch screen where your giant pilots walk to their space fighters one by one. Weightless conditions make getting out of the hangar a bit tricky but the more fighters you launch the more lives you have on a mission.

The actual mission is a side-on view, horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up. You must avoid trees, missiles, tanks and helicopters before reaching the silo. This switches to a single screen where your hovering fighter faces into the screen and can move left/right and up/down. Five towers have to be taken out by accurate shooting.

Once three silos have been destroyed, you can finally 'raid' Moscow. As with the silos, you must first penetrate Soviet defences in a horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up, then you switch control to a US Commando blasting away at troops on the Kremlin walls. Finish this and you enter the Reactor Room to throw explosive disks at a robot before attacking the reactor itself.

The graphics are all rather diminutive throughout, but they're fairly well done and the sheer variety of gameplay is stunning.

Unmissable for nostalgia freaks, but gameplay in Raid and Beach Head II is strong enough to make this a hit with a modern gamer too.