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Here it is, it says it right here in my dictionary - a storage vessel for liquids or gas. The type of thing you find in everyone's loft. A tank. So who'd want to be in command of one of those? Let's read the instructions. Objective - to rescue as many of your agents as you can from the enemy infested combat zone. And hide them in the water tank. Brilliant! That's strange, it doesn't say anything about hiding them in the tank.

Oh well, if that isn't what you do. perhaps playing the game will make it clearer, I'll read this bit on how to play. Tactical mode, move your tank around the combat zone. Oh, it must have wheels on it, and when someone comes along you jump inside and hide, and they think it's just an old water tank. What a great idea for a game.

So to move the tank around you look at the large map and when the picture of the tank hits the edge of the screen the next part of the map scrolls on. Oh, there's a Turbo, it must have an engine in it. So you can use the joystick to rotate the tank and move it backwards and forwards.

There's another map. It shows you where your agent is and an overall view of the combat zone. So back on the main map, you move your tank toward your agent. Hang on though, the enemy has tanks as well. That's silly. If both sides know about hiding in water tanks, what's the point? If you move your tank close to one of theirs the screen changes to battle mode.

So let me see, how do you activate the laser? Gun descend, gun elevate, turret left, turret right. Turret? Where's that dictionary? Twaddle, tusk, turtle, turret. Small tower. And this is where you fire the shells from. Shells? Okay, stop pulling my leg, this game is a spoof isn't it? These shells must he being shot from a gun that I'm holding.

And the shells probably come from the beach that I saw on the map. Now if I rotate, the countryside scrolls past.

Hello, what's this? A field gun pointed straight at me and a water tank with a field gun stuck on the top. If it wasn't firing these shells thingies at me, I could stop and think what a jolly good idea that is. What happens if I shoot back? That one went whizzing over the top, down a bit. Hit him. Ah ha! These numbers at the bottom of the screen go down. Got 'im. Now for the one at the back. Hello, where's he off to? Had enough, eh? Bah, missed. I need to shoot in front of him. One last shot. Aggghh! He got me!

I think hiding in motorised water tanks, with a big gun stuck on the top and trundling round the countryside makes a great game. I wonder if anyone's thought of' doing it for real?

I wasn't that impressed by the disc version of Tank Commander it did a lot of disc accessing just to generate pretty backgrounds. The only thing that seems to be missing from the tape version are the pretty pictures and this doesn't detract from the game at all.

So what are you left with? A fairly standard but challenging tank game. You won't be able to find another version of this game from another company - this is one of the few tank games around.

However the most famous of the others is Tankbusters by Design Design which is not an easy program to compete against.

Amsoft's policy of only taking top of the range software these days certainly seems to be paying off. Tank Commander is a very professional-looking piece of software. There is a brilliantly detailed loader screen with a tank depicted in Mode 1. The game itself is in Mode 0.

This does make tank movement slightly jerky especially when moving diagonally but it is only a very minor irritation.

I found it best to pick the combat opt ion early as this gives you more time to get the range of the enemy vehicles before they start firing back. The change from 2D map mode to 3D view while actually doing battle was an interesting idea. In fact, the whole game was full of nice ideas and touches.

I could see the appeal wearing off a bit though as the gameplay is not very involved.

Tank Commander is like an earthbound version of Rescue On Fractalus. Unfortunately, driving the Amsoft tank is nowhere near as much fun as flying the Activision spaceship.

The main thing that has been added is a scene which is like a cross between beach Head and Battlezone. The worst thing about the game is the way the background fails to reflect what is shown on the map if you confront an enemy tank which is sitting on a bridge the last thing you expect to see in close up is a tank in the middle of a field.

Tank Commander is one of the better Amsoft products. Less of a case of Amsoft Gold and more Iron pyrite.