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In the battle for supremacy in the games market the British hits have been few and far between.

American importers with games like Beach Head, Bruce Lee and Boulderdash have been cleaning up in recent weeks.

So it's nice to see one British company beating the various Yanksoft offerings in the dogfight to produce the best flight game.

The company is Digital Integration and the game is Fighter Pilot - now available for the C64 after its Spectrum version topped the games charts for weeks earlier this year.

The game features all the superior sound and graphics that we have come to expect from Spectrum to C64 conversions.

Flight controls and gameplay options are many and varied. You can practice landing - one of the trickiest manoeuvres that any pilot has to cope with. Also, you can attempt blind landing which simulates landing in the fog. If this does not sound difficult enough for you, you can also add extra hazards like crosswinds and turbulence.

To activate your guns, press the space bar - although you can only use these in combat mode. As with all the other modes in the game Combat mode has a training mode as well.

Training mode puts the enemy at a disgustingly unfair disadvantage - you can fire at them but they cannot fire back. If you just like blasting things then you can have great fun with the training mode - watching the enemy drift into your sights and then pick them off like flying elephants.

None of the other flight games I tested came close to Fighter Pilot for complexity and gameplay. Spitfire from US Gold - sounds like it should be a British game - has none of the sophisticated controls of the Digital game and none of the play options that make Fighter Pilot easy to get into but difficult to master.

There are no less than sixteen different commands that it is possible to execute - giving some of the real complexity of flying a jet fighter.

Fighter Pilot's programmer, Dave Marshall, is uniquely qualified to write a flight game - having worked for several years on computer systems for the Royal Air Force.

The flying training option positions your aircraft at the threshold of the runway base facing due North. Take off is slightly easir in this mode than in some of the later stages.

The main enjoyment of Fighter Pilot comes when you have mastered the controls and become a competent pilot. You can now take the USAF F15 Eagle into combat - which is Fighter Pilot's great strength over traditional flight simulations.

In this option you are scrambled and given a mission to defend four airfields.

Your air computer and radar tell you the position of the enemy aircraft and you set an intercept course. The dogfight is on at less than a mile distance and 5,000 feet altitude. To turn and run - which will sometimes be necessary when you have sustained too much damage - simply dive below the 5,000 feet level or distance yourself at more than a mile from the enemy.

If you sustain four direct hits, you are finished. All hits are registered by a change in colour on your radar. If you do find it necessary to turn and run to get repairs, the enemy will lock onto his original target and set out to destroy your ground installations.

For my money, Fighter Pilot is the best flight game now available for the C64.