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A superbly conceived and beautifully written program. Siren City consists of a blow-up of a city road map, complete with trains that materialise across the railway tracks; other vehicles that dart out of blind corners and even a passing plane.

You have to drive a police car round the streets without hitting anything. Pushing the joystick forward in the direction you are going accelerates the car; pulling it back brakes you. Turning is done by simultaneously hitting the fire button and pushing the joystick hard in the direction you want to go. As the blurb on the cassette cover says, even skids and U-turns are possible with this game.

As if simply driving about the city streets wasn't difficult enough, there are a couple of escaped villains to be hunted down on your travels, dragster ace Slitthroat Steve and helicopter pilot Dune-Buggy Jon. I had enough trouble just staying on the road once I'd built up some speed, but better drivers might actually manage to blow up a villain or two.

Because of the complexity of the graphics, this game takes around 13 minutes to load. Most roadrace addicts will reckon the wait to be worth it. The novelty value in Siren City is high, so it's difficult to tell how long it would take before driving a patrol car around those streets would be as boring as city driving is in reality.