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Beyond Software continue to live up to their reputation for innovation in computer games with Nexus - the first game to feature graphics produced with an image digitiser.

To add to the realism of the game's characters, programmers Paul Voysey and Tayo Olowu used snapshots of their friends, and then converted them to C64 machine code with a Print Tecknik digitiser. The screenshots show the detail that can be obtained using this technique.

But Nexus is not only innovative in its graphics. The game design is equally new and refreshing - getting away from the map, collect, and puzzle idea that has characterised the arcade adventure for the last couple of years.

In Nexus you are an investigative reporter who travels to Colombia to track down a friend who went missing trying to infiltrate a drugs ring.

Your contact is with a group called 'Nexus' who consist of dissidents from the drugs organisation bent on breaking it from the inside.

Your objective is to gather evidence of the drug factories' existence and then transmit this back to your editor. You are armed with a camera and audio recorder that you must use to record the evidence.

At the start of the game you have limited powers - only walk, run and punch. Various members of the Nexus team must be tracked down and persuaded to train you in additional skills. These are knife throwing gymnastics, lock-picking, unarmed combat, explosives, and firearms.

Special training rooms exist within the complex to which you must follow the chosen member of Nexus to learn your skills. The joystick commands needed to master a skill are shown in the central information panel during this training.

The on-screen mission training is not only good fun but saves you the hasstle of having to wade through a thick manual.

The graphics in Nexus are really superb - reminiscent of Impossible Mission. Here you have a good, meaty challenge with some excellent arcade elements thrown in for good measure.

Nexus is a spin-off label from Beyond Software.