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Devotees of my regular arcade games column 'Coin-Op Connection' will remember a few months ago a game called Commando. I was very impressed by this and thought that nobody would produce the game on a home computer for some time - perhaps years, whilst the home computer hardware caught up.

However, Alligata have done the impossible and produced a highly accurate reproduction of the game.

To recap, you play a soldier trying to reach an objective by 'rushing' various scenes in the game. The scenes vary from desert areas, to trenches, forts, and desert islands.

Your man can fire his rifle and also lob grenades. The opposition consist of grey clad enemy soldiers also with rifles that run around after you, jump off walls, and pile out of strong-points. There are also strong-points and bunkers with heavier weaponry - mortars that lop shells that have a similar effect to your grenades, machine guns that are extremely unsavoury, and other forms of detrimental heavy artillery.

Grenades are very difficult to use. To throw them you have to centre the joystick, press fire, then move the joystick in the direction that you want them to go; this can cause some difficulty if your style of play is similar to mine - wiggling the joystick by firing all over the place. I tend to run out of grenades at a tremendous rate, throwing them all over the place, where they are wasted and not used for their primary purpose - lobbing them over walls and into trenches where your guns can't reach.

Extra grenades are available in small caches that can be found at various points throughout the game.

The same bonus system applies for rescuing prisoners - except in the computer version there is only one guard to shoot; shoot him and the prisoner is exceptionally glad, waves at you, and gives you lots of bonus points.

The animation and graphics are superb, as is the opening theme music. There is little reduction in gameplay quality from the genuine arcade game and what there is is made up for and covered so that you don't really notice it. All the extra bits are there such as the staff car on the bridge and the opening doors to the fort - they could have been let out for ease of programming, but they haven't. This just increases the overall feel of what a great game that this is.

Commando was a smash hit in the arcades. I certainly hope that Who Dares Wins is a hit on computers.