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Gimme some, gimme some PT, PT - that's what I need. And that's what Combat School gives you. A hefty dose of military disservice and Decathlon-style joystick waggling.

If 1987 is remembered for anything, it will be for 'Namism. It was the year film producers rediscovered Vietnam war movies, right down to the soundtrack from one, 'Full Metal Jacket', becoming a hit record. Ocean, with typical guile, have ripped the tune off and stuck it on the front of this conversion. Still, everyone's stealing records these days.

If you've seen Full Metal Jacket, then you'll know what to expect in Combat School, because the Konami game is based on just that kind of gruelling physical preparation. The object is to qualify as a captain and go on to tackle a dangerous mission. Before you get that far, you'll have to undergo a rigorous course of training to prepare you for battle. This takes the form of seven lung-bursting, sweat-inducing, back-breaking events. Stand by your joysticks!

The game kicks off with the Assault Court. In true 'Krypton Factor' style, you're expected to complete it before the time runs out. You get a split screen here enabling you to play against an opponent or the computer in a straight race. The course consists of a series of walls, some low enough to hurdle, others which have to be scrambled over. To finish the course, you have to swing across a set of bars and leg it across the line. That entails thirty seconds of joystick waggling and hitting the Fire button to clear the walls. This is no wrist buster though, and after a few goes I was giving the computer a head start.

Graphically the assault course is probably the best looking event in the whole game. The animation is slick and realistic, the backgrounds detailed and colourful.

Successfully completing the course will take you on to the first of the three Shooting Events. This is a machine gun test with your man lying prone and taking out a series of targets: thirty-five in all, as they rise up randomly from a field. This is the event in the coin-op where you get the tracker ball whizzing around so that the machine gun rakes through the targets. You can't do that here unless you have an autofire joystick. Instead you have to press Fire on each one which can be a bit of a tricky business when you're trying to get the crosshair to scroll nicely through the targets.

When you do hit the targets, they shatter realistically, which makes up for the otherwise disappointing graphics on this section. Your machine gunner looks a bit like a stick insect, but I can live with that.

It's worth mentioning here that if you fail you go right back to the beginning, but if you only just miss out you get a chance to redeem yourself by doing several strenuous pull-ups in a set time. This entails some fairly furious stick waggling, but then again it serves you right for being a nancy boy.

Event three is the Iron Man Race, another sort of assault course. Again, you're up against the clock as you leg it, waggling the stick forwards this time, through a terrain covered in rocks and mines. Make it through these without falling arse over collarstud and you have a fast-flowing river to negotiate. There's a canoe in the middle which you can clamber into to up your speed, but logs float downstream and if you don't avoid them you'll be tipped out again. One mistake here and you can run out of time.

The Iron Man test has to be the worst of the seven events graphically. There doesn't seem to have been much attention to detail and the terrain looks flat and messy. It's an easy event really, as long as you don't fall. Nevertheless, I have to say it's my least favourite. The background graphics look as if the programmer split his coffee down the back of the computer here.

If you negotiate the Iron Man course, you get another dose of Shooting. This time it's strictly a duck shoot with the targets easily picked off. This time however, you have to hit fifty targets in thirty seconds which doesn't leave much leeway if you miss a couple.

Should you get the "You made it!" message, you go on to the Arm Wrestling event, an event which defeats me. That's not because I can't do it, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose at this piece of senseless waggling because you always go through to the final shooting stage. However, don't take a breather here because you can get a much needed time bonus for the next stage.

The third and final firing range takes you back to Target Shooting in the field. This time however you can't blaze away wildly. The targets which pop up are always in the same spot, but they are interspersed with red marine silhouettes which indicate that one isn't to be shot. That means you have to think before you fire, a problem that's made worse by the sticky joystick movement here which won't allow you to scroll the gun through the targets as before. This time you have to switch the crosshair through each one, which makes it very difficult to get from one side to the other before they all drop down again. To make matters worse, if you hit the wrong target the stick locks up completely and you lose your chance that round.

The firing range is one of the toughest events here and one that frequently trips me up. You need lightning quick reactions and the only way I can ever pass is by way of a lot of chin-ups for getting close.

The final test is the fight with the Drill Instructor. When Konami originally thought this up they must have just seen the scene in Officer And A Gentleman when Richard Gere punches it out with the sergeant. This scene is pure beat-'em-up with you having to subdue the instructor within a set time limit. You have kicks and punches as per normal, but this guy is mean and experienced and will give you a really tough time of it.

Graduating gives you the chance at The Mission that concludes Combat School. This is a top secret assignment to rescue a hostage from an American Embassy. The instructions won't tell you much about the job you have to do, but they entail using all the skills you've acquired in training, including the shooting, jumping and hand-to-hand combat. You won't need your arm wrestling skills here, soldier.

That's Combat School, a possible ten different tests of skill and stamina that make it great value for any arcade gamer. Konami's game proved a surprise flop after the way it was so well received critically, which made it look as if Ocean had rushed in for a duff licence. However, as a conversion, it's just what companies should be looking at. Nothing here overstretches the computer and, whilst the graphics in one or two places could have been improved, the gameplay is varied and absorbing. I'd have liked to see some of the nice touches from the coin-op included like the odd line of sampled speech, or at least the message, "Go home to your mother!"

Nevertheless this is a classy job and bears the unmistakeable stamp of Dave Collier on it. Forget Out Run, this is the game for Christmas.