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A fate worse than death has befalled five Earth Command Troopers - galactic conqueror, Gylend, has transformed them into cricket balls, thus playing havoc with their marksmanship and general combat abilities. Not only that, Gylend also cast them into a space-time vortex and the intrepid spheroids are now languishing in various unfashionable eras of Earth's history.

Time Soldiers is a one or two-player shoot-'em-up which casts you and your co-player as two troopers who escaped Gylend's naughtiness and now search for their missing comrades, armed only with a rapid-fire bazooka and a time scanner.

At the start of the hunt for each trooper, the time scanner informs you in which time zone they are lost, and you are immediately transported to a different one! Handy, eh? Each time zone is split into three sections, each piled high with period enemies - cavemen and dinosaurs in the prehistoric era, legionnaires in the Roman age, and so on.

Certain bad guys leave behind power-ups when shot, including rocket launchers, speed-ups and three-way firepower, which can be used alongside the standard bazooka. However, they have a limited ammunition supply, so they have to be used sparingly if they're to last to the end of a section.

The end of the section is, of course, where the boss monster appears. In true boss monster style, they are big and deadly and take a lot of hits before they expire. When you do at last kill them a time portal appears, which gives you a chance to jump to another time zone. If you don't need to warp, you can continue to the next of the three sections.

At the end of the third section in a time zone, the ultimate baddie appears, wielding his own super-weapon. Repeated head-blasting is required to total these guys, but when they eventually fall you're reunited with your missing comrade.

As a conversion of the Denski coin-op, this is a very competent piece of programming.

As usual, the two-player element adds a lot to the game, and if you're likely to have a friend around who's willing to accompany you, Time Soldiers is well worth a purchase.