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It's difficult to know where to file Wings Of Fury. One look at it is enough to have you reaching for the P-471 horizontal shooter drawer, another longer one will make you think again.

Wings Of Fury is no simple blast, but it's a bit too cute to cut it as a simulation, and to be fair it makes no claims to be the latter.

The plane you control is a Helicat, and the setting the Pacific during World War II. The task before you is daunting, your carrier the USS Wasp has been badly damaged and must be escorted back to base. Between you and safety though, there lies hundreds of miles of ocean, populated by Japanese craft, enemy torpedo bombers, and heavily defended occupied islands.

There are seven ranks, each of which complicates the missions you have to undertake to protect the carrier. Once you have selected this, the Wasp appears and you're given the option to select from rockets, bombs and torpedoes. Which ones you choose depends on the particular missions you have to complete. The involvement of enemy shipping obviously necessitates the use of torpedoes, but heavily fortified islands with concrete pillboxes require rockets to bust them open.

Firsy of all you have to take off from the carrier. Enough speed is necessary or you little plane will do a passable impression of a lemming. Even at full throttle it lurches dangerously close to the waves.

Once in the air you can see how the curious view system for the game works. As you climb, the perspective changes to give you a view from afar with a greater angle of vision and smaller objects. Dive down and you zoom in to a close up of the action.

It all takes some getting used to, and it's pretty easy to end up diving into the ground. But Wings Of Fury is tough in every respect. It's a game that will last for the right reasons as you grapple to clear a way for the stricken carrier.

You won't find any filled vectors of 3D polygons in Wings Of Fury. Its graphics are neat if unremarkable. In fact, much of the game's cuteness stems from the size of the characters and the plane. Try and supress a smile as you dive down and strafe a helpless group of Japanese soldiers you've flushed out if you can. They even scream like munchkins as you hit them. It sounds brutal, but one look at it is enough to tell you that it isn't.

The sound on Wings Of Fury is hardly expansive, but unlike P-47 to which this bears favourable comparison, it has an authentic engine sound and spot effects which add to the atmosphere. The game doesn't require much more and at least there's no duff tune.

If you like your shoot-'em-ups on the cerebral side then this is for you.