Now you might be looking at the screenshots on this page and thinking 'Blimey, that doesn't look much like state of the art 16-bit entertainment to me, John.' What I'd say to that, of course, is 'Hey, don't judge a book by its cover. And stop calling me John.'

You might also be thinking that Rampart looks a little bit like a cross between Missile Command, Tetris, and the ancient Atari coin-op Warlords, but frankly I doubt that's likely because the number of you out there who remember the ancient Atari coin-op Warlords is likely to be roughly on a par with the number of you out there who can whistle the whole of Prelude A L'Apres Midi D'Un Faune by Claude Debussy while simultaneously balancing two snooker balls on top of one another on your nose, so we'll forget about that completely. Still, even if you simplify it down to Missile Command meets Tetris, you'd not be a great distance away from the truth, so let's go with that for now.

What happens in Rampart is that you start off with a castle on an island surrounded by walls. The castle is then attacked by enemy ships, who attempt to blow away the walls, enabling troops deposited by said ships when they reach the beach to storm your castle and mercilessly slaughter its inhabitants. This happens for a set period of time, after which there's a bit where you rebuild the castle walls by joining up lots of Tetris-type blocks to form an unbroken barrier, at which point you get a load more cannons to fire back at the ships with. (It's a bit more complicated than that, but we haven't got a lot of room here). It's all very well for half-an-hour or so, at which point you notice that it never changes and get really bored, but try the two-player mode and it's a different kettle of fish entirely.

It's much the same game, except there aren't any ships and the two players face each other across a river and try to destroy each other's castles, in such a way as to make rebuilding them difficult or impossible. It's very simple, but it's so frantic and panicky that it's enormous fun, and you'll play it for years and years. And that's it, really. If you've got any friends, this is fab to the point of being unmissable, but if you haven't - well, you're a bit of a sad case, aren't you?

GRAPHICS 6

SOUND 7

GAMEPLAY 7

GAME SIZE 4

ADDICTION 8

Won't last you long in one-player mode, but with a chum this is top-notch entertainment of the first order.

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