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Rescue Raiders is yet another masterpiece from those hugely successful Sir Tech people. It is a strategic war simulation in which you command aircraft and ground forces advancing toward an enemy with the hope of destroying him.

The good thing about Rescue Raiders is that, unlike most strategy war games, you can see and control what happens directly.

You actually see your ground vehicles, soldiers and tanks trundling off towards the enemy in your quest for victory. This is much more exciting and enjoyable than looking at odd symbols on a map.

I suppose at this point you are wondering who you are up against. "Not those bastard green furry things from Sigma 4 again," I hear you cry.

Nope, this time you're coming to grips with a group of Time Terrorists from present-day Earth. These unsavoury lads have the idea that by altering the outcome of the Battle of Normandy their group can benefit in some way.

To do this they have to travel back in time, taking some 20th century weapons with them to help win.

You also have to travel back in time to try to stop them by doing the decent thing and laying your life on the line - as usual.

You must try to destroy their base at the far left of the terrain and the enemy will try to destroy yours at the far right.

There are eight battles in Rescue Raiders and you have to win them all or submit to total victory by the enemy.

The game uses very smooth, flicker-free, colourful graphics.

You control a fully-manoeuvrable helicopter - you have three of these - using a joystick with two buttons. This takes a little getting used to.

By pressing different keys you can deploy tanks, men, engineers, anti-aircraft guns, demolition team vehicles and even buy extra helicopters if you have enough money to help you in your struggle against evil.

You can pick up men in your helicopter and then let them parachute out over enemy territory by pressing the spacebar.

You receive money depending on how long you stay in the battle area. The screen scrolls left and right with a radar at the top of the screen. An interesting feature of the game is that if some of your men or vehicles meet opposing ones they actually battle it out automatically, which can be quite enthralling to watch, and the winning party continues on its way towards the opposing base.

A nice feature of the game is that before each battle you are shown a picture of Europe with a flashing star showing where the next battle will begin.

The game can in theory go on for a considerable length of time, so a save feature is available. Unfortunately, you can only save one game on the program disc. There is a backup on the other side, but you can't save games on it.

The game contains all the usual convenience features except a sound on/off function. This is probably due to the fact that the sound in this game is virtually non-existent, which is a shame.

This is a 64K game and so if you are using an Apple II+ like me, you will need a 16K RAM card.