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Hard times in Chicago, the Great Depression has made many unemployed, and most feel the need of a good stiff drink. Of course, that's been banned by the Prohibition but in secret bars - speakeasies - the Mob offers booze at a vast profit. And one of the best sources of alcohol is Canada, just across the Great Lakes which Chicago overlooks. During winter many amateur bootleggers race their cars right across the frozen lakes. Professionals just bribe poorly paid customs officials, and their alcohol makes gangsters like Al Capone incredibly wealthy. By 1926 Chicago's police is thoroughly corrupt...

Eliot Ness is the FBI agent sent to clean up the Windy City. His first action is a raid on a warehouse suspected of holding alcohol. Of course one of the policemen snitches to the crooks beforehand so there's no booze, just lots of heavily armed hoods. The warehouse level has multi-directional scrolling, and besides blasting normal crooks you can track down the white suited ones who carry useful evidence. If you shoot one a piece of evidence is dropped; collect ten and you finish the section. But as most of the time you're jumping up stacks of crates it isn't easy - when the evidence falls all the way down it's easy for another crook to grab it first! Also to be looked out for are violin cases (containing very useful machine guns) and roses (to restore energy).

After being betrayed once, Ness swiftly assembles the incorruptible 'untouchables' to help him with his task. The Italian Stone is a crackshot, Malone (Sean Connery) is a wise old cop and Wallace is the accountant. Together this improbable quartet set a trap at a bridge across the US-Canadian border. As soon as the bootleggers arrive, a massive shootout starts. Ness opens fire first, lying prone on the ground with a rifle. Using a telescopic sight he must pick off the bootleggers as they shoot back from the cover of trucks and cars. If things get a bit hot Ness can roll left or right, making the screen scroll with him. Roll over the edge of the screen and you can swap Ness for one of the other characters - useful if energy is low, but some are slower and less accurate than others.

Success here gives Ness vital documents which he needs Capone's accountant to decipher. Capone promptly has the accountant sent to a railway station to get him out of the city. While racing to intercept the accountant there the Untouchables are ambushed themselves. Load three, the Alley Scene, begins with Ness hiding behind a wall. If he moves to the left, the screen flicks to show the alley with mobsters moving forward, guns blazing, and cars driving past. You move a cursor to blast them, but your double-barrelled shotgun can only fire twice before it's time to pop back into hiding to reload. Once again, you can flick between the characters. Blast your way through the alleys and it's on to the train station.

This downward scrolling, overhead-view section has Ness moving down stairs, blasting villains, while taking care not to hit civilians. There's also a pram which Ness must move around to make sure it doesn't hit anything, spilling out the baby and leading to the squad's demise in a flash of bad publicity!

At the bottom of the stairs, one of the hoods holds the accountant hostage with a gun to his head. In this first-person perspective section you have to blast the hood and not the accountant. Originally quite gory, complaints from a chain store mean there's not so much blood now!

With the help of the accountant Capone is put away not for murder but for tax evasion! During the trial, one of Capone's hood runs out and is pursued by Ness to the roof of a building. This is a 3D sequence a bit similar to the alley scene, Ness has to keep shooting the hood backwards until he falls off the building.

No wonder The Untouchables has taken this long to come out. The programmers haven't decided to go for masses of screens based around one type of game but like Batman have gone for true variety of play. Each section is a game in itself with its own style of presentation, demands and tactics required to get through.

The scenes are well held together by a strong movie-style progression with a gradual difficulty increase, while the atmosphere is superb with a lot of grey colour to set the scene. I particularly like the way the cursor is used to move Eliot round alley cornes to reload. Watch also for the excellent graphic of Nitty falling to the floor in the final scene.

Individually the scenes aren't that original, but brought together they offer great variety and long-lasting appeal. Throw in some superb loading screens between levels and you have a great Value For Money program.

Well worth the wait.

More ways of killing someone with a gun have yet to be discovered. This really is a spectacular combat game, or games, as there's six of them. Yet despite the wide variety of game-styles the game holds together well with great newspaper headlines between levels.

Unlike Batman, if you lose all your lives you don't have to go all the way back to level one, which is a relief in such a massive game. My favourite stages are probably levels one and four, but all the levels are first class. And what's more, the music is brilliant: using a variety of famous period tunes for the levels, Jonathan Dunn has added a great deal of atmosphere to an utterly superb game.

If you thought the film was great to look at, be assured the game is even better. The graphic detail in the game is excellent; from the way the hood's jacket flutters when he's shot on level six, to how Ness reloads his shotgun in the alley.

The ragtime tunes which accompany the levels are superb too, they really get you into the mood of the times even if, like me, you usually prefer Alice Cooper! Just a few of the levels would make a great game, but six of them together makes an unbelievable package. The John Meegans/Steve Thompson Robocop team have come up with a real blockbuster.

Presentation 97%
Great newspaper reports between levels. Disk owners will have superb end-of-level static screens.

Graphics 95%
Colourful, well-drawn and a stunning attention to detail.

Sound 97%
Superlative period tunes really help make the game.

Hookability 95%
Instantly playable.

Lastability 97%
Six different games, all of them challenging in their own right.

Overall 96%
Enough arcade action to put most compilations to shame!