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Does the idea of a game full of sun, sea and sand appeal to you? Sounds a bit boring really, doesn't it. Well... what if we add an aircraft carrier, a fighter bomber, some gun emplacements, enemy ships... For goodness sake, stop slavering. It's unhealthy.

It's 1944 and war in the Pacific. Your aircraft carrier, the USS Wasp, has been crippled by Japanese torpedoes. The stricken vessel is limping along, trying to return to a friendly port for repairs. The route is lined with groups of small islands inhabited by Japanese gun batteries, each with a contingent of soldiers. There are also ships of the Japanese navy, complete with a few more gun batteries and a handful of Zero fighters.

To enable the Wasp to make safe passage through these islands, someone has to disable the gun batteries, shoot the men, sink the ships and down the planes. And it's no good looking round, with your eyebrows raised... you're 'it'. Luckily, you have your trusty Grumman F6F Hellcat at your side (well, all around you, actually).

To begin with, a small panel prompts a decision as to your choice of weapon: bombs are for dropping on land installations, rockets are for firing at enemy planes and the single torpedo is just made for launching towards Japanese warships. A jab of the fire button then brings the plane onto the deck. Your Hellcat is directed by joystick, and has a tricky little control method which relates to the side view, rather than your imaginary cockpit position. Push left to go left, with left/up to climb and left/down to dive. Push right to turn and fly right, and so on. It takes a couple of minutes to get used to but it makes sense. Anyway, give it some left/up and the plane taxis along the carrier's deck, lurches violently off the end, as if to plummet into the sea and just manages to claw its way into the sky with a tasty droning engine noise.

As you fly along (you generally fly from the carrier, right to left across enemy territory), you encounter the opposition. There's a small 3D screen which shows what's coming up - land, sea or ships - and if you want a more panoramic view of the surroundings, fly up past the top of the screen. Your viewpoint pulls back to about a quarter of a mile away, the land appearing as a narrow strip across the bottom, your hellcat as a weeny bunch of pixels. This sort of acts as a scanner: enemy emplacements, ships, planes and men are shown by colour-coded dots.

The idea is to clear each archipelago (group of islands, dummy), destroy the Japanese hardware and kill all the men. This is achieved by bombing the gun emplacements, hospitals (a bit sick, this) and barracks. At this point, the Jap soldiers come running out and you've got to kill all these as well, using low-level strafing manoeuvres (actually, it's very sick). A scrolling message tells you when the level is cleared, at which point you can return to your ship.

You can land on the carrier ship at any time during the game to refuel, carry out repairs or to re-arm with bombs etc. However, landing is well tricky: you have to fly past the ship, turn and approach from the fight, lying into the wind. Coming in almost level with the deck, you then stall the plane so it drops, tail-down, to catch its arrestor hook on the arresting cables (dead smart this bit - just like the real thing!).

However, if you come down past the cables, you've got to throttle forward and try to pick up enough steam to get in the air again. Otherwise you fall off the end, and it's scratch one Hellcat...

If you complete the level, you rise in rank (ranging from Midshipman to Captain) and start on the next. You can also select your rank before you start the game.

This is a real throw-back to Broderbund's early success, Choplifter. But for a game concept that's nearly eight years old, Wings Of Fury can still hack it with the best of them. The gameplay grows repetitive but as soon as you think you've had enough and turn off the machine, you want another go! With regards repeat plays, it's a real lasting investment. Morally dubious perhaps but plenty of fun definitely. Bombs away!

1. Jerky scrolling. Unforgivable, since there's so little going on...
2. Repetitive, even with seven missions.
3. Constant need to land and re-arm eventually grows tiresome.

1. Incredibly addictive and very challenging (it's a toughie!)
2. Choice of seven missions helps to keep that Hellcat in the air!
3. Plenty of neat graphic effects: ship rolling, tiny animated deck crew, etc.
4. Superb animation as your plane banks, dives and climbs.
5. Unusual joystick control is comfortable and very precise.
6. The varied modes of combat keep the interest level high.
7. Sound is minimal, but good.