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As far as I remember, there hasn't been a computer game that features elephants to any great extent, so Tusker is a real ground-breaker in the field.

In it you play a rugged Indiana Jones type explorer dad has just popped his clogs on the road to the legendary Elephant's Graveyard. You've decided to follow in your father's footsteps, and search a flip-screen version of the wilds of Africa for this hoard of priceless ivory.

On the C64, the game comes in three-part multi-load form, starting with you somewhere in the desert. There's sand, sand, sand as far as the eye can see, but the place is teeming with sword-wielding Bedouins and zombie tribesmen, who, for reasons known only to themselves, would like nothing better than to make Explorer Cous Cous from your guts. Every time you're wounded by their clubs and pointy sticks, you lose pixels from a jar of blood in the status area to show that you're getting a little nearer to your maker. However, being well-versed in the art of fisticuffs you can punch and kick most assailants until they're just a pile of bones in the sand.

Together situations call for tougher weapons, and there are a flippin' load of those lying around the place. Seriously tooled-up explorers don't walk the savannah unless they've got a dagger, machete and long-range weapons like a sling and pistol in their armoury. You can hold a full complement of weapons simultaneously, and select one by highlighting it in a weapons box at the top of the screen.

Reaching the Elephants' Graveyard is a test of brains as well as brawn, though, and you have to keep an eye out for useful objects which might be of use further on in your adventure. Water flasks keep you alive in thirty moments, but there are a host of magical artifacts which are what you need to get through the jungle village and the temple in the second and third loads.

In the later levels you're faced with adversaries far more dangerous than the fencing sheikhs. The second load features giant bouncing skulls, weeping idols with deadly tears and giant marsh monsters which spring out of the ground, give you a good kicking and then spring back down.

The third load is a sort of "Land That Time Forgot" affair, in which you have to duck swooping Pteranodons and avoid hungry water dinosaurs and even giant carnivorous plants!

The definition of the graphics for these beasts and the jungley backdrops is excellent, and the hero of the piece, a stubble-chinned specimen of spritehood with the lope of a man half-knackered, is impressive.

A bit of variety always makes a game a bit more interesting to play, and Tusker's multitude of different scenes help lend the gameplay that variety. You can be wading through an underground river, dodging crocodiles one minute, and duffing up tribesmen in ancient temples the next, which isn't a particularly nice way to behave, but it's quite good fun. The puzzley bits combine nicely with the hitting-people bits to make a game that plays very similarly to The Last Ninja duo. And considering how playable those two were, I'd say System 3 were onto another winner.

Last Ninja meets Indiana Jones in an adventurey beat-'em-up par excellence.