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Treachery on the High Seas. No, nothing to do with the Gulf war, but the theme of Microprose's first swashbuckling simulation.

Timed nicely to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Sir Francis Drake's game of bowls and the Spanish Armada, you get the chance to escape your mundane 9 to 5 job or 9 to 4 school day and become a buccaneer on the high seas.

The game is set in a variety of historical periods from 1560 to 1700. You can be any of four nationalities and play on four different skill levels.

You are also asked what your personal strong points are as a pirate - you can choose between fencing, gunnery, navigation, wit and charm, or medicine.

To start off, you have to join a ship, climb on to the deck and beat the captain at a duel. Once successful, you take command of the ship.

Your adventures begin in port, where you deal with the natives and buy provisions for the voyage ahead. You can also talk to the local governor or the people in the tavern who will ply you with information, not all of which is useful.

Any booty from previous voyages can be sold to the local merchants, and you can sometimes recruit crew from the tavern.

When at sea, the lookout in the crow's nest tells you whenever a ship approaches. If it is of the same nationality, you can ask for information which is of the same quality as that obtained in port). If it is an enemy vessel, you can bombard it with cannon fire, board it and defeat the enemy captain in a duel, after which the ship is yours to be plundered or commissioned and sold at the next port of call.

If you're a pacifist or a coward, you can always sail away unscathed. As well as naval battles there are land battles which tend to be very difficult to win, and stormings of ports which have lots of booty, but are strongly fortified.

When a land battle takes place, the ship's company divides into two or three groups to engage the enemy. Victory or defeat depends on the type of terrain, your tactics and the morale of each group.

This type of battle is rather like a game of chess, with each side manoeuvring to obtain the upper hand.

As you might expect, the object of the game is to win as many battles as possible, grab as much money as you can and live to a ripe old age in leisurely retirement.

Of course, lots can go wrong on the way! You can run your ship aground, be on the wrong end of a mutiny, or lose a battle or surrender, after which you are imprisoned for several months.

You can retire at any time, but the only time you are forcibly pensioned off is when you are too old to live such an adventurous life - normally after ten years of active service. You have helpful friends during the game, who will (tactfully) tell you when you are getting past it. On retiring, you can record your achievements in a Hall of Fame, which can be saved to disc and reloaded for you to gloat over, and wish you had so much money in real life.

Pirates! is massive, with scores of interconnected sections which have to be loaded in from disc, slowing it down. It's also expensive, but is superbly presented and is very challenging. It should keep you going for months, but do try it out before you buy it.

It took me ten minutes to find the disc, which was buried under a pile of instruction books, maps, posters, registration cards and other paraphernalia. Once I loaded the game, I was hooked.

This is an original format with enough options to keep Long John Silver busy for years. Mind you, I've never heard of American pirates - the ones here certainly don't speak the Queen's English. "You have gotten into trouble..."?!?

Devastating on the bank account, and bad luck if you haven't got a 6128 - Pirates! won't work on a 464 or 664, with with memory expansion.

I'm not sure about its attempts to run several game formats into one, but it isn't a five minute wonder. Not everyone's cup of tea, but war game lovers should enjoy it.

What an odd game. It has a certain similarity to the Mastertronic Magic Knight series of adventure games, with its method of making choices from pull-down menus, but it also contains arcade sequences like the swordfights, and land battles as in war games. I have never seen anything like it before.