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Somewhere in a war without end, Commander John Stryker is parachuted into enemy territory and comes down directly on the head of one of the Supreme Volgan Sergeants. Even better, inside the unconscious man's briefcase are details of every tactical operation the Volgans are planning to launch over the next few months. Hastily copying them all to his notebook, the chase is now on. Stryker needs to run all the way to Allied HQ through the no man's land dividing the two warring elements. And, in Stryker's Run, you are Commander John.

It's difficult to go wrong with such a simple premise and Stryker's Run really excels in the graphics department. The Electron's most colourful screen mode is used, and sprites are well designed and competently animated. A splendid mix of mountain ranges, desecrated buildings and army fortifications punctuate the backdrop as you press onward.

You run from left to right and, when you reach the right of the screen, you flick-screen to the left of the next one. You are able to run in the reverse direction too and this is where one of the first peculiarities of the game comes into play. You see, the battlefield is, as you might expect, peppered with enemy combatants whilst, flying above, helicopters also patrol certain areas. The combatants shoot bullets. The helicopters drop bombs. However, as long as you're hanging around the extreme screen left or the extreme screen right, neither will concern you much. That's because, as soon as you flick-screen to a different location, bullets and bombs disappear.

The next oddity concerns the "fighting" itself. Stryker's Run's fighting could almost be termed a "bullet range war". The enemy soldiers, who each obviously have a brain the size of a pea, often stand completely still and fire one bullet at a time in your direction. However, their bullets don't have as long a range as the grenades that Stryker can hurl back, and he has an infinite supply of them. He can also run back and forth in and out of their bullet range anyway. This "fighting" gives you, the player, a decidedly stronger hand to play with.

That's not to say there aren't some genuinely hair-raising moments in the game itself however; only that these tend to occur when a helicopter or an enemy suddenly appears, for example, as you enter a particular screen for a first time. If there's no time to take cover then the only alternative is to run away, and running away can sometimes involve being pursued by a helicopter dropping bombs that explode just inches from your feet!

If you want to take revenge on these overhead monsters however, you do get your chance whenever you encounter an abandoned plane. Clambering inside this allows the Stryker to temporarily take to the skies and mete out a little justice.

With all this variety on offer, the game is really only let down by four things. Firstly, its sound, or almost complete lack of it. Secondly, its lives counter, which seems to have been added in as an afterthought, and consists of a big, elongated number in the very top corner of the screen. This spoils the immersive feel of the playing area. Thirdly, its flickery graphics, particularly in relation to the planes in flight. And finally, the fact that, commensurate with the amount of enemies on-screen, it slows down.

Despite all these problems, and also considering the oddities I've already mentioned, for such a colourful (memory-hungry) game on the Electron, the speed and response time are fairly reasonable. On original release, some of these quirks did bother Electron User, but it concluded that Stryker's Run was generally really good.

And yet, whilst other Acorn magazines did feel much the same back in the Eighties, I actually cannot really see that Stryker's Run will appeal that much to the modern gamer. That may be because running endlessly to the right is always going to feel quite repetitive quite quickly, or it may be that death, when it comes, often feels quite unfair - nine lives becoming zero in the space of half a second due to a unlucky combination of circumstances, for example. When that happened as a child, I put up with it. But now I've been spoiled by games that don't force you all the way back to the beginning and it's become difficult to accept it.

If you're looking for a fairly handsome-looking run-and-gun type game then you could do a lot worse, and a physical tape, if you can find one, will usually sell for around £4-£6. It was also one of the few games that was released on floppy disc (alas, with no improvements) in the guise of Play It Again Sam, which you'll also find regularly for sale from £5-£10.