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International terrorists have stolen a nuclear weapon and holed up on a Pacific island. From here they plan to drop the bomb on New York and only you can stop them.

As usual, we are expected to do the American's dirty work for them. You must take the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier HMS Indispensable to the danger zone, map out the island, and bomb the terrorist base to oblivion.

Flight Deck is played over three screens; most of the action takes place on the carrier itself, where you are presented with a seagull's eye view of the proceedings.

The deck of The Indispensable occupies the top half of the screen, complete with take off and landing runways, aircraft lifts, parking bays, and tractor. At the bottom, your instrumentation shows wind speed and direction, course, cross winds, weather and damage status. Here you will also find out what planes are on the hangar deck and whether they are ready for take off.

There are ten bays containing four fighters, four reconnaissance planes and two bombers. The bay is shown in red until a plane has been refuelled and serviced ready for take off.

There are several things to be done in order to get a plane in the air. First, using the joystick you must manoeuvre the tractor above the lift, collect a plane and tow it to the take off runway. The take off sequence is started by pressing the fire button. A square indicates the correct flight path of the plane down the runway and this must be matched very closely to avoid a messy disaster.

Cross winds will blow the aircraft off course and if they are very severe make a take off impossible. For this reason you should manoeuvre the carrier so that it's sailing into the wind before attempting a sortie. Adjusting speed so that the wind is at 29 knots makes this part a doddle.

Next you must check where our plane is going. Pressing F3 brings up the map screen and the C64 announces "map" in a kind of high-pitched whine. The map depicts the island and surrounding area which is different each time you play. I discovered at least half a dozen variations.

To set the plane on course the sight is first positioned over the plane and then the destination. This will always either be the island or the carrier, depending on whether you are coming or doing. Remaining fuel for each plane in the air is depicted by a bar graph. This is important because if you don't turn back with half your fuel remaining the plane will crash when it runs out.

There are three other ways to lose a plane. You can literally lose it, off the edge of the map. Seconds before this happens, a verbal "plane off map" warning is given, and some sharp work with the joystick is imperative. It can also be shot down by enemy fighters (well-equipped terrorists these). If you make it this far you may crash on landing, but more about that later.

Once a plane is in close proximity to the island you switch to the island map and the C64 says "island" just to let you know where you are. Using the reconnaissance planes the surface of the island, initially grey, must be photographed.

As you fly over pressing the Fire button, surface detail is revealed and eventually, when the whole island is mapped, a target marking the terrorist base appears. The only problem with reconnaissance is that you are periodically interrupted by enemy fighters and must divert your attention to shooting back.

Theoretically at least, it would be advantageous to have fighters as well as reconnaissance planes over the island. According to the manual, a near hit from a fighter is enough to send a terrorist plummeting earthwards, others need a direct hit.

In practice this turned out not to be so. As only one plane can be controlled at a time you may as well use whatever you've got. It's worth bearing in mind, though, that you only have four reconnaissance planes and when they're all gone your chances of mapping the island and reduced to nil.

If you do manage to map the whose island (I did it once!) it's time to send in the bombers. Bombers can't shoot back at enemy aircraft and a direct hit must be scored on the enemy base to destroy it.

To stand any chance of completing the game it is essential that you learn how to land on the carrier deck. Unless The Indispensable is very near (in which case it will be attacked), planes only have enough fuel for short missions. Apart from that, landing is the most challenging and fun part of the game.

When a plane approaches the ship the message "plane landing" is wailed at you. The game then cuts to a sideways on view of the aircraft making its final approach. Using the 'meatball', or light landing device, you must guide the plane along the correct flightpath. Coloured lights indicate whether the plane is too high, low, to port, or starboard (nautical terms us seafaring types like to use) and you must make the appropriate adjustments.

If you are miles out the landing is aborted and the plane flies past for another go. Several times I thought I'd made it, but the plane wasn't on the deck when the carrier screen appeared. That would no doubt account for the horrible skidding noise. Landing is about a hundred times more difficult than taking off but much more fun. The plane makes a dead authentic, high pitched jet scream - well worth turning up the volume and annoying the neighbours with.

As a strategy game backed up by some good arcade action Flight Deck is good solid stuff. Not quite in the megagame mould, but a worthy offering all the same.

There are a few bugs and, in one or two instances, poorly thought out gameplay. Planes parked on the deck are destroyed if you switch screens! Sometimes when you take off the pilot bottles out and turns around for an immediate landing. If The Indispensable comes under attack while you are on another screen, the non-interrupt driven sound screams "ship under attack" unceasingly, making it impossible to do anything other than return to the carrier and run until out of range.

In spite of all that I didn't go to bed when I played this until well after four in the morning [What did your mum say? - Ed] and that has to be some kind of recommendation.