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The year is 1985. Or thereabouts. I'm sitting cross-legged on the carpet in my parents' living-room, eyesight-threateningly close to a 21-inch colour television. I'm playing a game called Harrier Attack on the original rubber-keyboard Spectrum. It is just past 3 o'clock in the morning.

What a touching scene from the dawn of home computer game entertainment, eh? I thought I'd share it with you now because everything about Jet Strike just reeks of nostalgia, and of that old-time Speccy classic, Harrier Attack, in particular. From the weird 8-bit graphics to the long long loading times, this is a game that miraculously catapults you way back almost ten years in video software history. Which may - or may not - be a good thing.

It seems to be aimed at people who like planes but can't be bothered with flight sims. You get to fly a wide range of planes on an equally broad selection of missions, which you can pick from various training options or the main part of the game, a linked series of 100 combat operations. Missions can involve an element of air-to-air combat, a hint of ground attack activity, or, just as often, a little bit of both - with maybe a suggestion of spy-rescuing or reconnaissance-photo-taking thrown in for good measure.

Your plane's controlled using a method that, at first, is frankly baffling, but after a bit of practice (I'd suggest - ooh - a week or so) enables you to pull all manner of manoeuvres without even thinking. (The main reason why I'm reviewing this is that I've been a big fan of the demo on the AP30 coverdisk and it would have taken too long for anyone else to figure out the controls.) On top of that, you also have to contend with the arbitrary scoring, the crap puns, the slow screen-swapping and the deeply unnerving way that huge mountains and tower-blocks suddenly scroll onto the screen and swat you from the sky like a pathetic insect. I'm tempted to lump these together as 'amusing idiosyncasies' than crippling bugs - after all, they just add to the whole nostalgia package.

But - and this is a big 'but' - even though I'm seriously into old-fashioned Spectrum-style romps, I still have a problem with Jet Strike. I really like the idea. I love the deep-down-feel-good sensation when you successfulyl carpet-bomb an unarmed convoy with a runway denial device. And I even derive some form of perverse satisfaction from the utterly unforgiving controls. But the one thing I cannot stand is the delays. Every time you crash your plane (and believe me, you'll be doing this a lot), you have to press fire and wait wait wait while the disk drive whirrs and clicks and eventually puts you back on the runway again. What's that? You've accidentally selected the wrong option from the main menu? Well, tough - it's probably faster to re-boot than to try and get back to where you started.

It's a tribute to Jet Strike's appeal that I've kept going back to it despite this frankly hideous flaw (to be fair, you can install it on a hard disk, which does help matters somewhat). I can't recommend the game unreservedly, simply because I know it'll drive some people completely spare. I can imagine it having some sort of weird cult appeal, however - the sheer level of frustration means that you're not going to finish it in a hurry. Oh, and it's also way too expensive as it stands - a lot of people may have bought a lot of Spectrum games that, in retrospect, were mildly entertaining rubbish. But then again, they weren't paying 27 quid a time.

Uppers: Cute sound, quite a variety in terms of planes and weapons. And - if you can figure out how to fly the planes - you can impress your mates with all kinds of stunts.

Downers: If not, you're on a one-way trip to disk access city. And the ticket's pretty expensive too.

Enjoy leisurely breaks between frenzied bouts of bizarre 8-bitty arcade action? Then this (expensive) curiosity is for you.