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No prizes for its graphics, but the game should win friends among people who enjoy playing for a while without being zapped into oblivion or, in this case, into the River of No Return, which is the waterway you're following in your assault jet. Its length makes the Amazon look a mere stream - I've gone through 35 bridges already.

Mention of Zaxxon might create the wrong impression, as this isn't in the same league, but it's a similar style as you control your fighter flying over a landscape. No 3D here, just a bird's eye view of the river scrolling (a little jerkily) from top to bottom, with your plane at the foot of the screen. Sinclair, Kempston or any cursor-controlled joystick can be used instead of the keyboard, the controls being left, right, accelerate, decelerate and fire. There is a rapid fire. Accelerate/decelerate merely alters the scrolling speed of the screen. You can halt the game.

The objects you blitz are crudely done, and all you ever see on the riverbank is an occasional mountain. Hardly realistic, and neither is the sound, unless a ship being exploded really does make a squelching sound. The other sound is an audible reminder of the state of your fuel supply, as you can either bomb fuel dumps or fly over them to somehow suck up the fuel. One or two people can play, and you can start on any of four different bridges: the first, fifth, twentieth, or thirtieth (not the ones the notes say). The documentation could be said to be lacking, and I wish it was lacking the twee notes about the program designer's California cycling activities.

Despite the limitations, the game's not at all bad. You move along a stretch of river, sometimes divided, with intermittent bridges to blast, well, squelch. If you can hit one when a tank's crossing, so many points the better.

Hazards include boats, planes, choppers, and tanks on the river-bank. Of course, these get more numerous, with the gaps between fuel dumps increasing. By the time you reach about the twentieth bridge, you need all the fuel you can get... frustrating to be rapid-firing and realise you've just zapped the only fuel dump as it emerges at the top of the screen.

A jolly enough game then, perhaps more for the junior champs than the heavyweight brigade.