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No limits... No mercy... No surrender... No plot! Well, not much of one. The basic idea is that the Middle East is torn apart by civil war caused in part by mercenary arms dealers such as America, France, Britain and, oops, my mistake! It's really Project Four, a mysterious collection of terrorists who can somehow lay their hands on the world's most sophisticated weapons.

To bring peace and stability to the region, the United Nations has assembled a squadron consisting of just three pilots! Namely Mickey Simon (USA), Greg Gates (Denmark (?!)) and finally Shin Kazama (Japan). They each have their own aircraft with unique characteristics.

At the start of the game you choose your pilot (two for simultaneous two-player action) and take off. Next stop is the munitions store. However, the store manager isn't your typical military man, he wants money! You don't think... no, he couldn't be a Project Four arms dealer!?

The pilots start off with a UN grant of $3,000 each but for later levels money must be earned by destroying enemy hardware. Money can be spent at the store at the end of each level. Hardware on offer includes superweapons such as 16-way shot, downward firing guns (useful for ground attack), napalm, bombs, homing missiles and so on. In the game they can be upgraded by collecting glowing spheres dropped by certain destroyed enemy vehicles. Superweapons are handy for taking on the superbaddies which lie at the level's end: the opening scene finishes with a gigantic missile launcher, level two is purely air-to-air with plenty of Russian bombers before the confrontation with a Stealth bomber, level three has a high-tech castle while level four features an aircraft carrier on caterpillar tracks! There are ten levels in all.

No, I've had enough of these mediocre conversions. U.N. Squadron is another example of nice graphics, naff gameplay. It looks good enough on the C64 with most of the coin-op's presentation (though the 'level complete' screen isn't there) and the graphic variety is commendable with neat jet animation.

The small sprite scale makes for a large playing area but you'll be bored silly by the lack of game pace: you just aren't pushed and I quickly tired of it. Amiga U.N. Squadron is a different kettle of fish on the difficulty front but ultimately achieves the same result.

Everything is thrown at you constantly, no time to relax, sheer numbers wearing you down and all making it a very unfair fight. Two players is highly recommended; without, you've had it. Good coin-op-identical presentation and quality in-game graphics and can't help very dated playability.

The Amiga game looks terrific with some great sprites and backgrounds. There's plenty of superweapons and imaginative superbaddies but the gameplay is poor. There's so much junk flying around that the game becomes almost unplayable. Every so often you make a breakthrough, get a little further and think it's not so bad. Then another piece of lethal shrapnel materialises out of nowhere and you never want to play it again. More frustrating than enjoyable, I'm afraid.

The C64 game looks good as well, with some attractive backgrounds and sprites which are all very easy to distinguish, no confusion here! Unfortunately the main part of the game is almost too easy - and somewhat dull. In particular, the floating mines are so slow it's a joke getting past them. By contrast, end-of-level monsters are very tough, simply because they churn out so many bullets and require so many hits to be destroyed.

Overall, it's not a bad conversion, just a dull one when there's so many better shoot-'em-ups around.

Presentation 52%
Typically Capcom, cute pictures of pilots, planets and weapons store. Good interlevel screens.

Graphics 67%
Colourful, detailed, imaginative and fast - but too cluttered to be really playable.

Sound 76%
A decent coin-op soundtrack with spot FX.

Hookability 62%
Starts off tough and confusing.

Lastability 67%
Ten levels provide a varied and substantial challenge, if you can take the frustratingly confusing graphics.

Overall 65%
A pretty, but confusing conversion.

Presentation 80%
Almost as good as the Amiga, with presentation screens included in level loads.

Graphics 78%
Backgrounds are colourful, detailed and attractive while sprites are small, but sharp and clear-cut.

Sound 62%
Mediocre soundtrack.

Hookability 76%
Easy to get into, although the action is never compulsive.

Lastability 64%
Ten levels provide a big challenge, if you don't mind unremarkable gameplay.

Overall 67%
A decent conversion, strangely lacking playability.