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Na na na nuclear rocket, got a ticket gonna put me on it. Good morning Vietnam, some hot noos' just in, the so-called Red Legion have assaulted the Lutonian embassy. As far as we know, everybody is off the premises apart from the ambassador's daughter who is believed to be hiding somewhere in the building. We'll keep you posted with further details, when it happens, as it happens...

In a crisis situation like this, only one thing can be done - send for the Mayday squad. The Mayday squad by the way are an elite team of the United Nations top anti-terrorist personnel, trained to deal with almost any situation.

Choose the three members from a group of nine, one being a leader and weapons expect, the second trained with explosives, the third is the comms expert of the party, and should be able to pick locks, use computers, search rooms and more besides.

Slowly your team descend into a deserted embassy corridor, one route is the exit, the other is a locked door. "Can't hear anything on the other side", comes the report from the blonde comms woman. "OK team, let's be subtle about this." A volley of machine-gun fire soon reduces the door to so many matches. The squad advance, waiting on the other side are two subversives who open fire without question. Quickly the explosives 'jock' introduces the room to a grenade and out go the terrorists, the lights, the doors and most of the walls.

Later on in the mission, the squad find unknown hostages who are usually of some benefit to the party, not to mention other enemy soldiers and their booby traps.

Mayday Squad is played from a first player perspective with you watching the action over the shoulders of your team. All movement, combat and actions are controlled via a cursor and icons.

The lasting appeal of Mayday Squad should be a lot longer than it is, as it stands the game is a bit drawn out due to the lack of variety in the building. It would take a fairly skilled mapper a matter of hours to have the entire game clocked and on paper.

The graphics are marginally above average, spiced up somewhat with some gore at times. For example, blood sprays everywhere is you blow a civilian away. My only complaint here being that the cursor is too slow to have the desired effect during combat.

A moderately good game which leaves you wondering if it couldn't have been a great one.

The C64 version should be on the shelves much the same time as the Amiga version.

Apart from the graphics being a tad on the dull side, most of the 'nice' gore effects have been axed too, which significantly detracts from the game's atmosphere, though it does play faster.

Even of the 8-bit machine Mayday Squad fails where a good programming team could have created a classic.