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Remember the days of the cold war when there were two superpowers - the Yanks and the Soviets? In those days you couldn't get shoot-'em-up flight sims that enabled you to stage raids that enabled you to stage raids on Saddam or Gadhaffi. Oh no! You had to put up with being a Russian or an American pilot upholding your country's status by scaring all the small countries around you.

Well, thanks to The Hit Squad you can relive the days before the Berlin Wall came down with the budget release of the excellent MiG-29 Fulcrum. You get to train and then fly five missions shooting various objectives out of the sky or off the face of the earth.

The missions start off relatively easy; in the first one all you need to do is fly past a trapped American submarine so that you can film it and bring the revealing tape back to base. Sounds pretty easy, but it isn't because you've got to avoid the British Sea Harriers who are there to protect the submarine - and the RAF just happen to produce the best pilots in the world...

The other missions all get gradually more difficult as you find yourself having to exercise more skill and use a greater tange of your MiG's firepower. You go through scaring the Chinese away, destroying a Middle Eastern dictator's oil supplies and blowing up a bunch of terrorists.

Once you've successfully collected 500 points from these missions you can go for the big bust-up in the desert and destroy the same Middle Eastern dictator's nuclear reactor. Good luck - you're going to need it. You control your MiG either with your keyboard, mouse or joystick. On top of the usual bank left, right, climb, dive and shoot commands there are loads of other keys which have various crucial roles like turning your engines on or off, braking and selecting your weapons and targets. It's a good idea to press P to pause the game, then consuit your manual to check which key to press.

When MiG-29 first came out more than two years ago it was fast and furious and was greeted with open arms from flight sim enthusiasts. Today, it still compares favourably with the likes of MicroProse's flight sims although it hasn't quite got the depth of something like B-17 Flying Fortress which we reviewed in ST Format 48. If you're looking for a competent flight sim, but don't want to splash out for the better full-priced ones, get it.

Fast gameplay with interesting missions.

You can get much smoother graphics on recent sims, and five missions is a bit limited.