From the big screen to the monitor, we bring the war to end all wars. John Rambo squares up to Super Joe in an explosive confrontation that damn near left our C64 a burnt out hulk. This wasn't just a muscle fight though, there's two big soundtracks locked in this games as well, not to mention the rivalry of two big software houses competing for the biggest slice of the Christmas market. So who had won when the smoke cleared?

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We've kept you in touch with the progress of Rambo since Ocean announced the deal and now we've got the finished thing. As they promised in November, Tony Pomfrett and Dave Collier have come up with the goods.

As John Rambo your mission is to ascertain the existence of captured G.I.s back in 'Nam. You are told quite clearly in the loading screen not to engage the enemy, but if you don't then you simply get a message telling you that you've found some and the game ends. Which is no fun at all.

No, what you really want to do is rescue the prisoner in the camp and cut loose with machine gun and explosive arrows. There are two approaches to this. You either make your way quietly up to the camp avoiding the gooks, maybe dropping the odd one with a knife throw, and then burst into the camp catching the guards unawares - or you can just switch to explosive arrows and go for it, blowing great holes out of the jungle and the camp and freeing the tied-up GI.

Either way once you've got the man, it's off to the helicopter. If you make it, the next stage begins - rescuing the rest of the POWs. The chopper is disappointingly small, but that doesn't matter before you can't spent long in it because your energy drains pretty quickly. Fly is straight to the helipad and rescue the rest of the men. At the time of writing this is as far as I've got, but you've got to free the rest of the prisoners using the right weapons. Then you get the chopper chase sequence.

The graphics are good but not astounding, here I think Commodore has the edge, and I was a little disappointed that Rambo had shrunk slightly from the man I saw on my preview disk. Another criticism is the one I applied to Commando, having to use the space bar to implement weapons. At least on Elite's effort there are only grenades to throw; here you get arrows, machine guns, knives, explosive arrows and bazooka. Having to search for the right one is the difference between life and death.

It's certainly a tough game but I'm not sure that the challenge is particularly hard. Six hits are enough to drain even Rambo's life away, and those gooks are better shots than they are in the film. The strategy element gives it an added edge of interest, though I have a feeling that once you've cracked it the game becomes quite an easy challenge, and more of a high scoring competition.

The icing on the cake is the sound. I said Commando's was good, but Rambo's is stupendous and the man behind it is none other than Martin Galway hose work on Hypersports and Neverending Story has already been lauded in this mag. He's getting sounds out of the C64 that no-one else is, sounds like echo and reverb that make you look round the room for the speakers.

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At last, the official version of the Capcom arcade game that's reckoned to be the biggest seller since Track And Field. Elite have been working on this for months, pausing only to take out an injunction on Alligata for their unlicensed Who Dares Wins.

The first thing I noticed about it was a similarity to the Alligata version and no wonder, because, when I loaded it again, I noticed that the programmer was none other than Chris Butler, the man behind Who Dares Wins!

If you haven't seen the arcade machine and I'm probably wasting my time here telling you, but the idea of the game is simply to cut a path through masses of enemy troops armed only with an M60 machine gun and a very supple trigger finger.

After playing this I'd say there were a few problems. Firstly, I was hoping the figure would be a bit larger, he's a third of the size of the original, but more importantly on some occasions he vanishes completely. In fact there is evidence here that suggests Elite finished this version off rather quickly, even though it was late, because the screen gets disturbed sometimes and some of the vehicles betray glitches or are unrecognisable completely.

Nevertheless this is a very faithful rendition of the original. Elite have packed all the furious action in with all the locations. I've been shot in the back, run over, grenaded and fallen down trenches until I'm dizzy. I wish you didn't have to hit the space bar every time you wanted to lob a grenade through. This is not the case on the Spectrum game. There you just hold down the fire button for longer. In fact, their version seems to be better all round than the C64's, apart from the sound.

This music is particularly good and I forgive Elite completely for putting a version of the awful Living On Video as the leading music. The game soundtrack lends itself well to the hectic action taking place on screen and slows to a hummable soothing tune for the excellent scoreboard facility.

Elite certainly score highly with this game, but I'm left feeling that it could've been slightly better. I know it's very popular as it is, but I find the game itself a bit samey. It's a must for fans of the arcade machine, and other Access-style shoot-'em-ups, but I don't think it taxes your imagination overmuch.

We undoubtedly have two biggies here. I'm exhausted from trying to review them, but I can just gather enough energy to award Rambo my commendation. What really swung it for Ocean was the strategy element, the sound and that brilliant explosive arrow option that lets you go berserk and raise entire lumps of jungle to the ground. Super Joe will just have to be content with being mentioned in dispatches.