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Unusually for Hi-Tech, this game isn't a licence from a dodgy Hanna Barbera cartoon. It's actually a totally original product, in so much as something that's basically Ikari Warriors can be called 'original', though here the player is in a tank (or 'piece of miniature hardware', as the inlay would have it) instead of faffing about on foot. This of course immediately opens the doors to lots of fun driving over enemy soldiers and listening to their (differently-pitched!) screams, free from those 'bumping into things and dying' worries. Not that you're invulnerable, of course (bit of a silly game if you were, though it would probably still be loads of fun), as the enemy forces are armed to the teeth with a lot of rather heavier weaponry, including tanks, planes, helicopters, mobile rocket launchers and huge armoured personnel carriers.

Hardly innovative stuff, you might be thinking (and you'd be right) but that doesn't stop Blazing Thunder from being a great little game. Faster-paced than is the norm for this kind of thing (and blessed with some great sound effects) it fairly cracks along through some effectively cartoony backdrops and heaps of action.

It's as playable as you'd expect something this simple to be, and hard enough to be addictive too. Especially fun are some of the later landscapes which are often quite imaginative (if not to say decidedly odd) in design - worth looking out for. One word of warning - it's only half as much fun if your joystick doesn't autofire - but essentially we're in a moan-free zone here. A winner.

A really dinky budget game, and a must buy for all Ikari fans.