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Hewson, and more specifically, Rafaelle Cecco, have always had a bit of a reputation when it comes to producing good looking games. Now, would you think I was mad if I told you that Stormlord is graphically, by far and away, the best game they've ever produced.

You are Stormlord, a sort of short, little, dwarven type thing. Still, ordinary dwarf are you. You are completely insane. All your friends have been kidnapped - no reason there to have you locked away. You are going to rescue them - well, a touch of sunstroke there, but that's all. All of your friends are fairies - what was the number of that mental health institution?

Each of the levels scroll horizontally, and you have to run left and right, occasionally jumping (sometimes off springboards) to get to areas not reachable by simple running.

Each of the fairies is imprisoned in such a way that you have to hunt around and use an object to get them. For example, one of the fairy folk is held in a small cave guarded by a swarm of bees. The easy way to get the bees out of the way? Get the pot of honey and drop it somewhere else. The bees will fly to this, leaving you with an open goal, as it were.

At the end of each level, after collecting all the folk, you get to play a subgame where you are rewarded by the little fluffy lovelies. You have to throw hearts at them (ugh!) and if you hit them, they drop a little sack of gold. You have to collect the cacks before they disappear, and as many as possible before the timer runs out.

The graphics are amazing. No expense of memory has been spared to bring you silky smooth animation, large hi-res sprites and tons and tons of colour.

The sound too is amazing. An excellent in-game tune plays throughout and the title tune is brilliant. Composed by Charles Deenen and Jeroen Tel of the Maniacs of Noise (Zamzara, Savage), it contains a blinding hard rock guitar sample (cheers, guys!).

Enough puzzles to keep any arcade-adventurer happy, and trigger happy goon amused for hours. A must for sorely neglected C64 owners this month.