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What was the name of that Kenny Everett character? You know. The American general with the huge shoulder pads and a chest full of medals. The one who used to say "We're gonna round 'em up, put 'em in a field and bomb the..." Yeah, that's the one. Anyway, whatever his name was, he'd love this game.

The only trouble is that the anti-American pinko subversives haven't been conveniently rounded up and put in a nearby field. They're scattered from the Persian Gulf to the USSR and it's going to take some pretty high-tech equipment to track them down. To a certain extent, the high command has got the situation under control, but what they need is a bunch of guys who are prepared to climb inside a B-52 and deliver 50,000 pounds of explosive mega-death missiles to the collective communist doorstep. Any takers?

The game is unashamedly (and rightly so) based on Dale Brown's apocalyptic novel 'Flight Of The Old Dog', which chronicles the adventures of a group of die-hard pilots and their kill-hard B-52s. They are the West's only chance of salvation from an increasingly powerful Soviet bloc, and as it happens, Flight Of The Old Dog is one of the three scenarios in Megafortress, the other two being training at Red Flag in the US desert and the now ubiquitous missions against Iraqis in the Persian Gulf.

But this isn't one of your Knights Of The Sky-style take-off-have-a-dogfight-and-land flight sims. Oh no. That would be far too simple. You see, for a start the B-52's a long-distance stealth bomber, so it's not going to mix it up with any MiGs because it's trying to get to the target unnoticed. And, what's more, the B-52 has a five-man crew, which means on every flight you're the pilot, co-pilot, navigator, weapons office and electronic counter-measures guy.

Apart from making it the perfect game for schizophrenics, this is where Megafortress really comes into its own.

It's quite unlike any other flight sim because the realism isn't just a purist's delight, it actually becomes an integral part of the game. Each position has a baffling screen of fully operational instruments, replete with dialable dials, switchable switches and buttonable buttons.

With all this attention to minute detail, you'd be forgiven for thinking Megafortress is a game for aeronautical train spotters. Sure, it's easy to imagine five hooded anoraks huddled around an Amiga, taking turns to operate each station, and getting kicks out of turning the landing lights off at exactly the right moment. But they'd be missing the point. Yes, it's amazing that you can twiddle the knobs and flick the switches, but it's their effect on the gameplay that's important, rather than the fact that they exist at all.

controlling each of the positions becomes a sort of role-playing-cum-strategy sub-game that provides a telling test of nerve and intelligence. In fact, Megafortress is as much about strategy as it is about flying. For once, the manual's not packed with explanations of next-to-useless manoeuvres such as the inverted 'S' and the Immelmann loop.

Alongside the essential instructions on how to operate the equipment, there are detailed explanations of electronics and avionics. Some of it reads just a bit like an A-level physics lesson (so I'm told), but it all adds to the game's highly realistic atmosphere.

As far as the flying is concerned, the frame rate is slow and doesn't compare with F-15 or Knights Of The Sky. But it doesn't take long to realise that it doesn't really matter. The B-52 isn't going to get involved in any dogfighting, so the game's playability isn't impaired by the plane's sluggish movement. And anyway, as I said before, Megafortress isn't about fast and furious dogfights. It's about tension.

It's about sitting on the edge of your seat, waiting for the target to come into view. Hoping the enemy radar won't spot you. Checking the radar to look for incoming missiles. Telling everyone else in the room to shut the hell up while you're coming in to land. Worrying that you've missed the in-flight refuelling rendezvous. Switching to the nav station and biting your nails as the plane sneaks around a mountain, a couple of hundred feet above the ground. If you want a nerve-racking computer game, you just found it.

But not everything is hunky-dory in this high-tech game world. Megafortress has several annoying aspects, but they are flaws in the game rather than the gameplay. The Red Flag training missions are a bit too basic to start with, and it can take quite a while to master the complexities and subtleties of each station on the plane. There's no point trying to get more excitement by moving on to a combat mission because the B-52 will be wasted before you can say "Don't shoot at me, I'm still learning how to fly this crate. Patience is most definitely a virtue in your first few hours with Megafortress.

The game is also let down by the 3D system. Apart from the slow frame rate, there's a distinct lack of ground detail until you reach the target area. The mountains have a horrible habit of leaping up out of thin air, which can be particularly unnerving when the plane's trying to avoid detection by following the contours of the land.

The external view is also a bit of a disappointment. With 50,000 pounds of bombs dropping every mission, it would have been great to sit back and watch the high explosives rain down on unsuspecting enemies. Unfortunately, from the external view, the explosions are accompanied by flickering graphical glitches that obscure the short-lived fireballs.

But if you can live without the most sophisticated graphics in the world, Megafortress has got a lot going for it. On the face of it, the idea of rendering five flight stations in such detail could have created an exercise in interminably dull, mind-numbing button-pushing. But the disparate elements gel together to create an enthralling challenge that provides a totally different experience to any other game I've played. Megafortress has got atmosphere, excitement and tension in abundance. Forget what the trendies might say about the buttons and the switches, as far as I'm concerned, the attention to cockpit detail makes it all possible. Listen to Captain Morrissey of the Smithsonian School of Flying. Plane spotters of the world, unite, and take over.

Uppers: Surprisingly enjoyable game for what at first appears to be trainspotter's delight. Enthralling atmosphere and a wide variety of tasks keep you glued to the screen.

Downers: Can sometimes be a lot of flying time for the sake of blowing up a few targets. Lack of ground detail reduces the game's otherwise excellent attention to detail. Disk-swapping is a pain with a single-drive machine.

Atmospheric gameplay introduces a new dimension to flight simulation. There's nothing like it around at the moment, but don't get it if you want a quick blast.