Mastertronic's chavvy answer to Ikari Warriors - only considerably worse (makes you wonder what the question was!). U.C.M. is well presented, with a great title tune, but it plays like a brick. So much for the "Ultimate Combat Mission"... Funnily enough, it features the sprites from Elite's conversion of Commando... OK, so maybe it's not so funny.

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Another re-release clamouring for your pocket money is Epyx's successful wrestling beat-'em-up. Undoubtedly one of the best of its kind anywhere, it offers neat graphics, good animation, large, witty characters and canvas-thumping gameplay.

There's eighteen moves crammed into Championship Wrestling, and they're all authentic. Get to grips with headlocks, pike drivers and the suplex, then try them on uglies like the poncey Prince Vicious or fearsome red injun sorts like Howling Manslayer.

A must for grapple fans everwhere...

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With the sequel sitting proudly on the shelves, what better time to re-release its big brother?

Dan Dare was, and still is, one of the best conversions ever of a comic licence. It features nice graphics, characters which do justice to the artwork of the 50's original and, bit of a shocker this, a game. Dan Dare contained a neat little arcade adventure beneath its comic style captions. You had to rescue Digby and the Prof from the hands of the Mekon in a neat adaption of ladders and levels type gameplay.

Re-release of the month - no problems...

This is one of those Firebird games where you wish you could go back to the Invaderload because the graphics and gameplay were better. Hall Of The Things is a conversion of a *four-year-old* Spectrum game! What can you expect then? Sampled sound? Parallax scrolling?

No. What you get is lots of green boxes and a stick figure that runs around from location to location.

If Hall Of The Things can be noted for anything, it is that it predates the likes of Gauntlet by a couple of years and that should only be of passing interest when you compare it to other Gauntlet cheapos on the market. Someone, somewhere's extracting the urine.

Suffering stars! A group of terrorists have stolen a couple of medium range nuclear missiles and intend to destroy the werld! Egad! Only you can prevent this - with your super sleek fleet of tanks and choppers. Negotiate the hilly terrain of Battle Valley in your tank, destroying gun emplacements, missile launchers and enemy outposts.

Use your thrifty chopper (once you've got it up) to wipe out air strikes and repair bridges. Wowza! Sounds great - but it ain't so hot. The good graphics and first class presentation barely compensate for the mediocre gameplay in this run-o-'the-mill shoot-'em-up. Ah well, you can't have everything...

Cheap shoot-'em-ups are ten a penny these days but a good one and a tough one never goes amiss. That's what you get with Scout. Navigate a scout capsule across a hostile planet in search of bits of your spaceship is the basic idea and plenty of exact hopping and firing is needed in what turns out to be a niggly but addictive blast.

The inlay promises eight planets and extra weapons, but best of all there's loadsaliens! Yeah! *Loadsaaliens!*...

Ho hum, a horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up. A great stimmy puh of a horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up at that. The graphics are dreary, so's the sound - and so's the gameplay for that matter (Zzz).

Wave after (yawn!) wave of uninspiring aliens zip across the screen in a predictable and uninteresting manner, until you reach the end of a level where you meet the deadly snakey alien. And he's just as at home to Mr Yawny as the rest of 'em. Try eating your money instead [Eh? - Very confused Ed].

This dreadful multi-directional scrolling Super Sprint-style racing game was released over a year go - and even then it was widely regarded as dated.

Now it's been re-released at a budget price - well, forget it. Two quid is still asking too much.

Remember Ocean's NOMAD? Well, this is similar (ish), only marginally better (which isn't saying much). Trundling around the maze-like corridors of the enemy space base, shooting robots in an attempt to locate six pieces of a particle destroyed and destroy a super computer is tedious.