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Operation Wolf - or Op Wolf as most addicts call it - is definitely the coin-op of the year. OK, I know, you are pig sick of that phrase "coin-op of the year". I know all the ads claim that their coin-op conversion is the one that all the punters are pumping their dosh into. Well, there is nothing I can do about all this hype - all I can tell you is that the official arcade industry charts prove that Op Wolf is the real number one. And if that isn't conclusive enough for you, the game is also the one that the C&VG team have put more 10ps into than anything else this year.

There is no missing the game in your local arcade. It's the one with the Uzi machine gun mounted on the front of its vast, bulky cabinet. Chances are it is also the game with a cluster of gamers huddled around it.

When you have your first go you can easily get the impression that all the game amounts to is a case of swivelling that Uzi on its base and spraying the enemy with machine gun fire - attacking anything that moves.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Although you are armed to the teeth - with stacks of bullets and grenades - you have to make every bullet count if you are to succeed in your [some text missing] that had been achieved previously in military shoot-'ems up like Green Beret and Combat School.

The use of the Uzi led many people to believe that its absence in the home versions would make the game unconvertible. Mike Pattenden, for example, writing in the December 1987 edition of CU said "Why do they bother? Are they going to issue an Uzi sub-machine gun with every copy?"

Ocean's programmers came up with a far cheaper solution. They simply replaced the gun with a floating on-screen crosshair. Crontrolled by joystick or mouse, you simply move the crosshair to the target and press fire. OK, so it's not quite as good as handling, and feeling the weight of the Uzi pressing against your shoulder blade - but from just about every other angle this game has to be ranked as one of the best conversions ever.

In terms of the consistent quality of the game across a variety of machines it definitely is the best ever.

What I particularly like about the original game design is the way it simulates the strategic - as well as the blood and guts of the battle. The six levels are: The communications set-up, the jungle, the village, the powder magazine, the concentration camp, and the airport.

Each level sets you a specific task which helps a little towards your goal of freeing the hostages.

Level 1 is set in the Communications compound where your aim is to cut the enemy off and stop them from calling up more reinforcements.

The enemy constantly fire at you, lobbing grenades, throwing knives, and - should you let them hover - straffing you from helicopter gunships.

Each hit weakens you and makes your Damage Barometer tick downwards. If it reaches zero it's curtains, and a grim sounding voice will inform that "Sorry, you are finished here" (only on ST and Amiga versions).

The aim of the game is to avoid sustain hits by shooting the grenades out before they hit you and eliminating the soldiers before they take aim.

Get through this and you find yourself in the jungle of Level 2 where your mission is to extract information from the enemy about the concentration camp.

Level 3 is not for pacifists. You are ordered to go into the village and kill all the enemies whilst at the same time to "take a rest" I should point out the amindst all this glorification of war Op Wolf does have some semblance of conscience - there are hostages civilians feeling from the mayhem - and nurses trotting across the battlefield carrying the wounded on their stretchers. Should your bullets accidentally hit any of these you are punished by losing energy.

Level 4 is set in the enemy's ammunition dumps - your task is to "take the ammunition by force".

If you survive this far you get your first chance to rescue some of the hostages. Level 5 has five hostages incarcerated in the concentration camp. Your orders are to "help them".

You have to be a pretty good Op Wolf player to get to Level 6. Set in the airport - this is where the remainder of the hostages are being held. Your orders are to rescue the hostages in the airplane and get away.

The gameplay of the various levels is essentially the same. The battle field scrolls slowly from left to right - your crosshair gun site panning across with it. The enemy rush on from both sides - in three set planes. There are soldiers in the foreground that practically fill the screen when they dash on middle-sized ones in the mid ground, and dozens of troopers that dash across the screen in twos and threes in the far distance.

Depending on what level you are on the tanks, lorries, motorcyclists, choppers or gun boats (in the jungle level) usually arrive in the foreground.

The game is at its best when you take out the enemy vehicles. You can knock them out with persistent Uzi fire but the most effective method is to use the grenade launcher. You can even take out two vehicles with one massive boom.

The lorries rip apart when the grenade hits them and go up in a ball of flame and grey smoke. Trouble is, you have to be careful not to waste your grenades as you only have five of them at the beginning of each level. (Which is why a certain, nameless C&VG reviewer's policy of blasting the nurses with grenades as soon as they appeared is not particularly recommended).

Special mention has to be made of the quality of the graphics on the ST and Amiga versions - the armoured cars, choppers, and gun boats are identical to their counterparts in the coin-op.

I suppose a certain degree of near-coin-op graphics is now taken for granted in ST and Amiga conversions - but what pleased me particularly on the ST version is the little details of gameplay that have not been forgotten. The tricks that you discover after you have played Op Wolf a good few times, like shooting the birds, and the pig that scampers on to pick up more ammo. It is this kind of attention to detail that makes for a good coin-op conversion irrespective of the graphical capabilities of the computer you are playing the game on.

The software tycoons are having right battle royal this Christmas. Bets are being placed, claims are being made as to who will be number one. It reminds me of the famous Bill Shankly quote about football being much more important than, life, or dead, or something like that. To you Op Wolf, Afterburner and Thunderblade may just be games. To the tycoons they are company profits, reputations, image and a whole host of other things. C&VG doesn't take sides in these matters. We just review the games. So what is our advice should you only be buying one coin-op conversion this Christmas? Buy Op Wolf - it's a brilliant conversion and you will get a lot of fun out of it.