On a planet that's not far, far away (Earth) there's a war going on between those capitalist pigs and communist dogs. You have a choice of playing against the pids, the dogs or taking on a human opponent.

Before you get into the conflict, you can choose which of the three scenarios to play, the length of the scenario and computer difficulty level. There are a few other options to customise the scenario a little more, including chemical weapon usage and season.

The battlefield is made up of thousands of hexagonal tiles in which both your and opponent's forces are displayed. Only a small section of the map is displayed, just over a hundred hexs worth. Down the side of the screen are a row of icons that allow the map to be scrolled and provide information on the whole battlefield.

Special operations, air strikes and paratroop assaults can be called up from the menu across the top of the screen. Political, strategic and weather reports can also be obtained from the menu.

Everything is controlled by the mouse, including giving your troops orders - it's just a matter of selecting the unit and clicking on the route that you want it to take.

The airforce play a very important part in the game and can shift the balance of the war in your favour. Airstrikes can be called up and sent to destroy your enemy's airbases, disrupt his supply lines or attack concentrations of his forces. Air support and reconnaissance are also useful to your war effort.

After each movement, both NATO and Warsaw Pact airstrikes are resolved and then ground-based combat takes place. Reconnaissance and supply phases follow and then it's back to movement again.

Sound is hardly worth mentioning, because there's very little of it, there's ping, ping and errrm... ping. Although the graphics are colouful, there's little animation and scrolling of the playing area is slow. Alert boxes are used frequently, but they're the boring standard ones that you get on the ST, it would have been more visually appealing if they were redesigned by the programmer. A lot could have been done to make the game look better, but it just wasn't bothered with.

Red Lightning is another fairly standard war game that's up to the standards of SSI's other war games.

It's about time that war games were made more attractive to the general public rather than being aimed specifically at the minority of dedicated enthusiasts who'll probably buy any game that comes out, simply because there are so few released. Many potential buyers are put off by the boring presentation and huge, but detailed, manuals that accompany the games.