GLIDER RIDER

Up, up and away. You’ve taken out one reactor — the broken eggshell in the foreground — but now a laser tower’s getting shirty...

Joining the ‘Silent but Deadly’ squadron is not a good idea if you’re looking for a quiet life. Any dirty jobs going, and you get it.

This one looks particularly nasty. A bunch of arms dealers called the Abraxas Corporation, with few scruples and ‘no questions asked, John’, are causing a bit of a problem. So the World Council, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that the Abraxas Corporation has got to go, and the lads at the good old SBD squadron are the ones to do it. ‘I mean, boys, we’d do it ourselves, but what with the island being made of plastic and therefore invisible to radar, we thought we’d give you the honour.

When our brave chaps get to the island, they discover that some joker from the armoury section has been taking a little practical mickey. Instead of a rather fast jet and a couple of nice thermonuclear jobs, you’ve ended up with a convertible hang glider and a handful of grenades. Terrific.

Fortunately Abraxas has designed its plastic island with lots of nice hills scattered all over it. So the technique is to zip around the island with the hang glider cunningly disguised as a motor bike. Then scoot down a handy hill, and launch into the air by quickly reversing the direction of movement.

The object of the mission is to bomb everything in sight on the island. Unfortunately, things can only be bombed from the air, and as soon as you take to the ether, the local laser opens up — thus draining energy. Our hero starts his quest with 100 energy points; at zero, he’s a goner; and he can become shark food if any careless flying is done over the sea.

The trick is to head-butt a radio mast — this makes the local laser base go a bit loco — then take to the skies quickly before the laser gets itself sorted out and bomb the reactor which tends to be very close to the laser base.

There are ten of these reactors scattered around the island, all of which have to be taken care of in half an hour, otherwise the rescue sub takes off, leaving our hero stranded. Stockpiles of grenades have been left lying around the place to which he can help himself whenever he likes. Well, they are arms manufacturers, so you would expect to be able to put your hands on a bit of ordnance when needed.

The screen display is in the now customary 3D perspective with the action flipping from screen to screen as necessary. The graphics depict the main base complex, including the factory, and the wooded surroundings of the base which contain the reactors you are out to destroy along with plenty of hills to launch the hang glider. On the ground, four direction controls move the motorbike in the corresponding four directions. When in the air, left and right tum the hang glider, and forward and back cause it to climb and dive. On touching the ground the hang glider reverts to its motorbike form.