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When danger is near and deeds must done, who're you gonna call? The UN Squadron, of course! Well, maybe calling three hero-types a squadron is a bit of an exaggeration, but when you're dealing with the likes of Shin Kazama, Mickey Simon, and Greg Gates, you're not really too far off the mark.

The latest in US Gold's long line of Capcom conversions enables you to become one of these trendy (check out Shin's hair-do! Aaow!) heroes. Each hero also has a different aircraft at his disposal. Shin feels most at home with his trusty Tigershark, Mickey blasts his foes away with his F-14 Tomcat whilst Greg struts his airborne thang in his A-10 Thunderbolt.

There's ten missions of blasting mayhem on offer, and two of the three heroes can play at the same time! There's plenty of enemy squadrons to be dealt with using your trusty cannon, but when the going gets tough, the smart cookies pick up the power-up tokens that litter the playing area and double their destructive prowess in one fell swoop! Yowzer! Money can also be collected and at the end of each mission, you can buy extra gadgetry at the UN shop. Forcefields and Napalm are just two of the useful commodities you'll need to keep those enemies at bay.

The enemy can be pretty sly at times as well, so beware! They've despatched terrifying guardiands to the end of each level and they'll be waiting for your call, so it's a case of pinching as many power-ups as possible, buying some mega-destructive weaponry and then kicking some enemy posterior!

I can't really say that the arcade game really appealled to me at all. The coin-op added nothing to the already flogged-to-death horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up genre. It's much the same story on the Speccy conversion.

There's no doubt that the technical aspect of the game are extremely impressive - the scrolling's incredibly good with a nice turn of speed. The graphics, although monochrome, are fine as well with well-defined backdrops and decent sprites.

It's just a pity that the competent coding wasn't used on a more original concept. That's not to say that UN Squadron is a bad game. Far from it. There's plenty to keep you at the Speccy with some pretty decent shoot-'em-up thrills on offer - and a two-player mode as well.

If you're a fan of the arcade machine, or a shoot-'em-up fiend in general, then check out UN Squadron. No doubt you'll enjoy it immensely.

Not a stunning blast, but a pretty close conversion with great scrolling and decent sprites. ST shoot-'em-up squaddies should sign up without delay!