Firebird
£9.99 cass, £14.99 disk

It's World War II and flying a P47 you're pitted against eight levels of heavy enemy action. Don't panic - the P47 was one of the most heavily armed and armoured planes the allies possessed.

You start your mission with a single shot cannon, but as you destroy enemy planes icons pop up here and there: Scoop them up for a boost. They come in six variations - 'B' loads bombs, 'E' gives spray missiles, 'M' multiple missiles,'T' directable fire, 'S' extra speed, and '1UP' bestows an extra life. Collect multiples of the same icon to increase weapons potency. Just remember that it your bonus weapon or feature is up to full power any accidental pick up of another icon loses you the one have.

The enemy you face is not just airborne, gun turrets both stationary and mobile on trains plus tanks fire at you too. Make it through a level and you're greeted by the end of level guardian, a giant mechanical killer. Learn how to use the power ups to dispose of these menaces: on level one use bombs.

The arcade version of P47 isn't one of my all time favourites. The Speccy version does nothing to change that impression. It may be good graphically, with small but nicely detailed sprites - especially the train chuffing along with its deadly cargo of guns -, but there's nothing to write home about in the other departments.

P47 Thunderbolt is hardly likely to set the gameplaying scene alight with its novelty, but gun crazy arcade action veterans should get some fun out of it.

MARK [79%]

That's right, change the graphics in a game, keep exactly the same gameplay and rename it! That's basically what's happened in P47 (sounds a bit like a government form!). It plays just like any old horizontal shoot-'em-up with you having to collect extra icons for ammunition and lives, etc. The only difference with P47 is that the space ship has been replaced with a bomber and the starry backgrounds are now a World War II skies. There are some digitised graphics in the game too. Between levels and on the game over screen you get pictures of bombers which look like they've been taken straight from a documentary on flying. Soundwise it isn't too bad: an unexceptional tune on the title screen plus the odd machine gun and explosion effect. P-47 holds nothing new in the way it plays, but could just give the hardened shoot-'em-up fan a challenge.
NICK [63%]

Firebird
£9.99 cass/£14.99 disk
Reviewer: Robin Alway

After all the vest-wearing, keep-their-lunch-money-in-a-purse type quiz show licences and sports games they've been making me play lately, it's a relief to get my hands on a real man's game for a change. Something Dennis the Menace would play on his Speccy, rather than Walter the Softy.

And P47, needless to say, is just such a game - a traditional horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up, in that, um, it scrolls horizontally and you have to shoot things. It's also pretty traditional in the authenticity stakes. Okay, so it's set in World War II, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the historically inaccurate helicopters, SAMs and other bits of weird machinery zooming across the screen. It's enough to make Planespotters rip up their Pan Am bags in annoyance.

This is the type of game in which you don't have to buy the farm - there are sufficient numbers of dirty scoundrels out there more than willing to give it to you for free. Their arsenals include missiles, bombs and some rather nifty bullets which fragment in mid-air - all the usual stuff you find down at the Super Weaponry Warehouse basically. And guess what, most of the planes leave behind these pretty little weapon tokens when they're hit. Blimey.

Just as compulsory for this type of thing are the large, ginormous, huge and really quite big enemies you've got to cope with at the end of every level. Here, you come up against a massive train, a humungous plane, a whopping great tank, a ginormous ship (which fills about three screens!!) and, erm, that's as far as I got!

You destroy most of them by knocking out a section at a time, until eventually they explode in an impressive mass of beefy explosions, a fine example of P47s solid-looking, detailed sprites.

Other graphics are pretty scrummy too. For instance, there's a serene and smoothly-scrolling mountain backdrop on Level One and a red and yellow sunset on Level Two both of which would almost be beautiful were it not for all those rum enemy-types intent on blocking your view and downing your bird. But here's where we come to the game's one and only prob. Die to the gritty detail of these backdrops, the bullets sometimes get lost among the pixels and sneak up on you unseen (especially since there's often so much going on-screen that you can't take it all in anyway). Luckily, the programmers saw fit to include a mono option on the title screen to take care of this - it might not be as pretty in black and white, but at least you can tell what's going on. But I shouldn't care really. There are a hundred games that are much worse in the "I can't tell what's going on!" stakes - it's just an unwelcome reminder that the Speccy can't always be colourful and playable at the same time.

And so to the conclusion, and it's pretty positive actually. P47 may be no R-Type, but it's a perfectly competent and satisfying addition to the Speccy stable of shoot-'em-ups. It's just a pity that there are so many of them about already, and some really neat ones at that, both at full price and on budget. It's good but it's no Megagame. Still, this may well be the last game Microprose puts out on the now more-or-less obsolete Firebird label, so it's good to see the name going out in (some) style. Yep, if you want a good old reliable horizontal-scroller in which the machine guns go ratatatat, the explosions look a bit dangerous and the bandits can be depended on to turn up dead on three o' clock (well, you might not be that lucky!) then this will do nicely.

Label: Firebird
Author: In House
Price: £9.99/£14.99
Memory: 48K/128K/+2/+3
Joystick: Various
Reviewer: Garth Sumpter

Neerrrrowwwww! Kaa BOOOOOM! Tally Ho chaps and yoiks. You can have more destructive power at your command than Johnny Fartpants on a vindaloo crawl in this latest conversion of a Jaleco coin-op where you find yourself at the controls of a P47 Thunderbolt, the fastest and biggest single seater fighter/bomber of World War II.

It was sooo big that Gabby Gabreski, America's highest scoring ace pilot of the war, said that the best way to take evasive action in a P47 was to undo your straps and run around the cockpit!

Convinced? Well all of you who've seen the arcade will be relieved to know that P47 follows the same formation as its big brother. After having defined the keys or joystick movements (clever stuff that) and confirmed them, it's on with the flying jacket, stick a piece of gum in your mouth and take off. You fly from west to east and the general brief is to blast anything that moves. Enemy planes will appear and disappear as soon as a well aimed volley rips it's cockpit out (oo-er!). Destroy any helicopters that appear and they will leave icons that either add bombs, multi-missiles, speed ups, spray missiles, directable fire or an extra life, most of which weren't available on the original but then this is no simulator, it's a straight forward blast 'em to hell.

Eight levels of action takes your plane through northern France, Africa and even above the clear skies of the Med, where you must bomb tanks and with an end of level nasty that can either be tanks, battleships or even bigger tanks. All of which adds up to a game that whilst is graphically very good (especially with its colour on colour off option), remains a shoot 'em up that is very playable and looks and feels very much like Silkworm - with the helicopter replaced by, a P47 Thundercat.

JIM SEZ: just like Scramble circa 1943. Lots of action but nothing new.69%.