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There are flight sims, the F15s and Falcons of this world, that are immensely complicated, with an initial interest rating somewhere down in single figures and a long term one up in the 90s. Try loading one of these and see how far you get without the manual, chum. Great if you have a trainspotter mentality, but not exactly a thrill-a-minute.

There is the frenetic arcade action of Thunderblade and Afterburner, all excitement and trigger finger ache. The most fun you can have with your clothes on, sure, but hardly Mensa material. You could train a monkey to play these, if it had the patience.

And in the middle there is Lancaster: thrills, spills and not a cardboard keyboard template in sight. In this WWII flying ace setting you're the gunner, bearing a heavy responsibility: keep those nasty Bosch off your pilot's back while he reaches his objective. Then it's a quick change of uniform and down into the loading bay to act as target spotter for the bombing raid ('scuse lack of authentic flying lingo, by the way).

Begin by choosing your options, setting the conditions - and therefore the level of difficulty - as tough as you feel you can take. Complete novice? Opt for instructions, automatic targetting, practice mode, safety belt and regular stops for cocoa and a lie down. Then, as you become mission-hardened you can opt for less hand-holding and more in the way of stomach-churning, wrist-aching, mindblowing, breathtaking, action.

Now choose your pilot from the three available - pilots Pennington, Thompson and Jennings. The missions you fly depend on their age and experience, so you'd be well advised to begin with Thompson and work your way up through the ranks.

Time to take to the air, as a rather neat animated sequence shows you and those other magnificent men climbing into your flying machine. (Like the equivalent sequence in, say, Tintin On The Moon, you can terminate this pretty but pointless sequence the second and subsequent time you fly. It's good - but not that good.)

And at last you take to the skies, in a 3D-filled vector graphic Lancaster of which the programmers are justifiably proud, an impressive collection of panels trundling in (almost perfect) unison down the runway and into the wide, dangerous blue yonder.

A short mouse-driven map sequence later and you're under attack. This is what you want through all that rigorous training for (well, what you shelled out 20 nicker for, anyroad). You're facing out the back of the plane, with bandits at one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock... The plane shivers and you swing wildly to and fro trying desperately to down those enemy fighters before they bring your promising career as a war ace to an abrupt and premature conclusion.

The sampled engine sound is just a tad too obvously cylical, and graphically Lancaster is rather stronger on set pieces - the climb aboard animation sequence, the well done taking-off, the homecoming to girlfriend, wife or mother (depending on choice of pilot) - than on in-flight realism.

In particular the ground into which your plane plummets should you screw up looks rather more like a page of green exercise book than some corner of a foreign field. And the final "bombing" sequence would hardly be impressive, graphically, on an eight-bit machine.

Yet overall there's more than enough to convince you, in a darkened room and with the sound up, that you really are living dangerously four decades ago over Germany.

Three complaints: the packaging is dull, the music is atrocious and the disk swapping is a downright disgrace.

Exciting? I should say so! This may not be Microprose, but it sure as hell is fun. No doubt the purists will complain that it ain't realistic, and they're probably right. Me, I wouldn't know, and I don't give a toss. I'm up there, downing those Jerries and rat-a-tatting with the best of them.

For mental exercise, realism and authenticity climb aboard Spectrum Holobyte's Falcon. For arcade sensation, sweaty palms and dangerous blood pressure go shake, rattle and roll it with Activision's Afterburner. For strategy and a sense of being there combined with all the fun of the arcades, head for Lancaster.