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Yawn. It was two in the morning and I was feeling pretty drowsy. The disc drive whirred quietly and my eyes blurred. I'm not entirely sure what happened next, but it was pretty weird. I looked at my TV screen and there I was, posing like some errant fairy godmother, with a lovely pair of golden wings flapping behind me.

Then things started happening. Blue Airlifts started buzzing round me like wasps around a jam pot, sapping my energy as they touched. Fortunately, my magic wand was loaded and I opened fire to try to persuade them to buzz off - but they kept on coming.

Things were to improve however, as I slowly became accustomed to my surroundings. Somewhere deep in my subconscious I had the feeling that I must collect five little pink fairies in order to get into the next level of this strange experience.

Unaccustomed as I am to going round picking up fairies, I nonetheless steeled myself and set off on my quest - although quite what the ultimate aim of it was I still didn't know.

Suddenly out of the ground emerged two Grunts. They were ugly beasts, looking like giant eggs on legs.

These monsters spat globs of energy sucking venom at me and, to make matters worse, they were totally unaffected by my puny magic wand bolts.

Luckily, I had noticed that every now and then the wand would shoot out a bomb which really cracked them up, so some defence was at least possible.

This particular task was made more difficult by the fact that the Grunts would usually survive a direct hit. This was partly compensated by their falling to bombs dropping a short way ahead of them.

Having picked up the fairies and despatched sufficient Airlifts and Grunts, I bolted for the doorway to the next level. Here I was confronted by enormous red dragons and long-nosed flying sea horses which needed repeated shooting in order to kill them.

The Grunts of the dragons would get me more often than not, but I kept coming back for another go. I woke up with a start. In front of me lay a pre-release copy of Nightmares, a new title from Red Rat.

It was four in the morning and I was feeling pretty drowsy. The disc drive whirred quietly and my eyes blurred...