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The worm that turned

After four nuclear wars, those weapons of total destruction were outlawed from the Earth, as the planet wobbled along on a precarious orbit round the Sun. Unknown to the leaders of the One Continent Alliance, the generals of the army were not happy having to make do with fast rate, high explosive, non-nuclear weapons and set to plotting treachery.

Rebellion erupted later and the government stared in horror as the combined armed forces bore down on them. A hasty plan, nay a desperate plan, was conceived to save civilisation from another, inevitable, and fatal use of nuclear weapons.

Take command of the latest helicopter, or even a rugged, weapon-wielding jeep, and plough through the armed ranks, blasting, killing, shooting, destroying, wrecking, in search of the general at the end. Only by killing all the generals can the day be saved.

When confronted with the options menu, make sure you pick the correct options because you never go back to that screen and have to reload if you want to do so. To switch from one to twoplayer mode you must reload - stupid is putting it mildly.

Even though the jeep is armed with a cannon which can be rotated through 180 degrees so that it can fire backwards, it is still very difficult to survive in it.

Landmines and tanks are your two main worries, with the end-of-level choppers and tanks being the most vicious.

A small-sized playing area scrolls in from the right, with a parallax effect from the landscape and a starlield. Wave after wave of enemy choppers stream in spewing lead, while gun emplacements along the ground throw missiles into the atmosphere like confetti at a wedding.

Life in the chopper is much easier than the jeep but you are a larger target and the sprite detection is not so good as it should be, making life none too easy.

If you shoot a landmine it releases a cloud of plasma into the atmosphere, which can be collected to provide a temporary shield, or shot to produce a smart-bomb-like explosion.

Further aids to the cause can be created and collected by shooting a goose-like aircraft which you can cook only by hitting it in the neck. Once well done, it reveals score bonuses and, more important, double firepower icons for both players.

Once you get into that blasting groove, with lead flying and the enemy dying, you can almost believe this is a good game. Then something tough and nasty requires you to move and you remember how desperately laborious it is. Like some kind of nightmare it all happens in slow motion.

The huge missile approaching relentlessly, your chopper seeming to move through glue, the distressing loss of your final life, and then the horrible realisation that unlike the ST and Amiga versions you have to return to the beginning again.

Sonics which lack variety and impact accompany action which only just gets above turgid, in a small playing area with little thought having been expended on the options, and you have just paid for the worst version of what was a good game. Very disappointing.