SOMETHING terrible has happened in Fairyland. I mean to say, evil queens, incessant thunderstorms and various species of itinerant thugs and no-goods is one thing - a man can learn to live with that - but locking up all the cute nymph-like fairies in outsize bubbles is another bowl of washing up completely.

Your mission, and Mr Stormlord's, is to rescue said nymphettes and ultimately engage the wicked queen in battle for the party leadership.

You get a seemingly generous nine attempt at regeneration should you fall foul of the local flora and fauna, but you must also take into account the fact that Stormlord is a bit of a fairy himself - he is easily driven down the dusty way to death when confronted by anything more dangerous than a blade of grass. I do not know, in the old days a hero would be knee-deep in gore with savage steel whipping the gullet out of everything that drew breath, and here we are with a bearded old pansy flicking little bits of pixie dust around the place, without much effect I might add. Caution is definitely recommended. Rather than wait for a break in the weather you would better get going, because you only have a day to save the universe. By way of public transport, the fairy folk have enlisted a giant eagle which can be picked up at any convenient terminus. It may be a bit rough and ready, but it is damn sigh more reliable than BR.

I must say, Fairyland is not exactly what I expected. It seems to be exclusively populated by irate dragons, poisonous caterpillars, silly old men with wands, murderous goblins, carnivorous plants and some strange life form that baffles any effort at biological definition. Sounds a bit like Format's office. All of them are, of course, deadly and only some can be despatched with liberal sprinklings of pixie power.

Gameplay will test you to superhuman levels of cunningness and dexterity as you balance on a daisy petal preparing to leap over a sticky, tricky venus plant or run the gauntlet of the dragon woods in the height of the egg-laying season.

There is an overwhelmingly puzzly rather than gamesy feel to Stormlord - time limits are tight and many routes lead to inescapable and infuriating dead ends - those pixel-precision jumping skills you have nurtured over the years will come in very handy. The most brain-pummelling amazing, brilliant and wonderful thing about this game is the sound. Not only the terrific music, but also the awesomely staggering sound effects, which are so crisp and precise you will believe someone has sneaked a CD in the back of your monitor. All this is not at the expense of the graphics, which could also be described with a long list of superlatives. Good use of colour breathes life into Fairyland, especially some of the statues, which you may feel compelled to go past as often as possible, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, know what I mean.

Stunning background animation combined with sound effects build up a very palpable atmosphere which is hard not to respond to.

Hewson and Raffaelle Cecco are once again showing the form that won them the adoration of millions on the C64. Fairies really do give you better value for money.

Sean: Badh the Crone has imprisoned all the fairies in Fairyland and is draining all their life energy in order to prolonging his (her? Its?) own life. You, Stormlord, being a good chum of Rose the Fairy and a founder member of the F.F.F. (Free Fairies Forever) peace movement intend to release the said fairies and so destroy Badh.

The fairies have been imprisoned in different areas of Fairlyland, and not surprisingly, many varied obstacles and puzzles stand between you and the ultimate aim of the F.F.F. For example you're going to come across giant bees, vicious goblins armed with daggers, skeletons with bouncing heads and horrible creepy crawlings.

Getting past some of these is often simply a matter of chucking an energy bolt or dagger at them, whilst others need more thought. Take the bees on level one, for instance, which stand between you and a fairy. The pot of honey about 300 screens along will probably be of some use, but how to get it close enough to the bees to distract them is the problem. You also have an eagle to call up for assistance, which will carry you to places which would otherwise be inaccessible.

As usual there is a sub game - this time it involves throwing hearts at fairies to make them fall in love with you and then catching the tears that fall, like dew, from their sad eyes. Yeuch! I feel sick.

Stormlord is actually a conversion of a Hewson eight-bit smash from earlier this year, and is typical of Hewson's slick arcade adventure style games. One problem games like this face, I suspect, is that the 'left, right, pick up, drop' whilst perfectly suitable for the 8-bits, seems a little old and staid on 16-bit computers. In addition, Stormlord has the added disadvantage of seemingly dodgy collision detection at points. These facts meant that in the short term I found the game fairly boring and frustrating. But, being a persevering type, however, I... er... persevered, and after a while I must admit that I was rather getting into Stormlord

The most attractive aspect of the game is the atmospheric background graphics, which look exactly like the most stonking set you could imagine for A Midsummer Night's Dream, or Spencer's The Faerie Queen. Tons of strange flowers, warped, gnarled trees, and striking thunder and lightning abound. The main sprite however, lets the game down a little. Although it is suitably coloured and complements the atmosphere well, the animation is a little stilted and rigid at points, like when Stormlord jumps or is carried by the eagle.

The sound consists of an averagely attractive ditty and wind howling through the trees. It's in the gameplay league where Stormlord scores the points - after initial unfriendliness, it develops into an addictive arcade adventure. The problems are well thought out, and give the game an element of challenge which will keep you coming back to it as you suss each problem.

All in all (he said, introducing the final paragraph with a typical summary statement) Stormlord is a flawed but addictive game and to my surprise, I found myself returning to it again and again. Definitely the type of game which will bring back many a happy memory for anyone who, like me, has moved up to a 16-bit computer from an 8-bitter.