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Gadzooks, zounds and other Olde Worlde sayings. An arcade war game? Yup, someone has finally flipped and tried to make tactical battling fun! What kind of fool would want to play such a silly game? Well, erm, Trenton actually!

Medieval, it says on the box, conjuring up images of knights in shining armour doing honourable battle on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Rampart has no truck with this poncing around in tin lark, preferring instead the tried and tested military solution of heavy artillery. Let's face it, if you can't blow it apart then you definitely don't want to fight it with a sword!

Rampart has to be the first strategic wargame arcade conversion ever! Your goal is to encourage all the people in the surrounding area to accept your particular political stance. This is achieved in the true democratic tradition, namely a fight. You start with a castle and some cannons which the enemy tries to destroy by blowing your buildings and weapons to bits. Obviously you get to do the same to him. This 'debate' rages until one of you loses control of your castle. Then the winner is hailed as the conquering hero and the loser gets to meet Mr Executioner (known as Ploppy).

It's not all killing though, it's just mostly killing. Rampart in both one- and two-player mode is a game of three halves [Any more gags like that and you're fired! - Ed]. In one-player mode you have to fend off some sea-bome raiders and in two-player it's a mate's castle. The first phase of the war is to pick your castle. Dotted around the map are five potential sites for your empire. You try to pick the one which is (a) best situated to attack the enemy (b) which will offer the greatest potential supply of arms and (c) least likely to burst into flames destroying national art treasures.

As soon as you've selected the corner of some foreign land that will be forever England, little blokes build huge walls around your central tower. You're allotted a few cannons and ten seconds to place them. Once you're set, the mode change bar sweeps down the screen and battle begins. In one-player mode, a flotilla of computer-controlled ships ning down the screen popping off shots at your palace; in two-player mode the other guy and the computer start having a go. To fire back, you just move the target cursor and press the button.

If all your cannons fired simultaneously and the shots hit instantly, Rampart would be a walk-over, a rout no less. This is not the case. Rampart will have you railing at the unfairness of life, the universe and the laws of ballistcs. If you think about cannons, it becomes clear that they were useless old junk. They took an age to load and the balls were (a) very heavy and (b) very large.

So, leaping to the defence of reality (and gameplay), Rampart only allows each of your cannons to fire one ball at any one time. This forces you to pick your target and allow a lead on each shot - aim a little bit ahead of the target. And these cannon juggling acts aren't made any easier by the strict time limit - each battle only lasts thirty seconds!

As the timer hits zero the war suddenly stops, as if everyone's become peace-loving hippies. Of course they haven't, this is just the rebuild phase where you repair your castle and expand your empire. In Pipemania style, you have to surround your tower with new walls and if you fail then it's game over. The trouble is you have to re-build with randomly generated wall segments. If you have time - once again there's a thirty second limit - you can try to enclose another tower to push up your gun count. After this you re-arm and go at it again.

Rampart could be great, but it's just too tough! The game starts off hard and then ups the difficulty level in BIG steps. In two-player mode it's fine, as human players effectively set their own degree of toughness, but in one-player mode you're always on the sharp end. So while solo play eventually saps your enthusiasm, played against a mate Rampart's a hoot!

1. Neat blend of arcade games styles.
2. Effective graphics.
3. Gets very, very hectic.
4. Encourages excellent nastiness in two-player mode.

1. It's too difficult.
2. Totally unfathomable scoring system.