If the idea of an action based strategy game turns you off, then go back to bed. If you were infuriated at building up a huge army in North And South only to have it wiped out because you couldn't get the hang of firing the cannons, stay away. If you had conniptions every time your carefully planned war effort went all Pete Tong in Rocket Ranger because you cludged-up the takeoff subgame and lost two months, go and put the kettle on. If your carefully oiled battle machinery proved useless in finishing Defender of the Crown because you cacked the catapult up, this is not the review for you. And of course, if you screamed blue murder at Star Control when you mined enough resources for an Ur-Quan Destroyer only to have Player 2 nip round the back of it in an Ariloulaleelay Skiff and ping it to death while you tearfully struggled to turn then GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN AND MAKE ME SOME PIE, BITCH.

Video A - Attract

On the other hand, maybe you're like me and got completely obsessed with retarded little games like this. Maybe you had likeminded friends, and you'd go round each others' houses and spend whole days figuring out cheesey little tricks to shaft each other. If so (and presuming that you've had enough Gunbound for now), chances are very good that you'll get a big kick out of Scramble Wars.

The game takes the same basic setup as the "Wars" series - grid based, turn based combat where bases and cities must be taken and held in order to farm cash with which to buy more units. At each end of the map is a giant gatchapon machine (a capsule toy dispenser) which dispenses tougher and faster units depending on the amount of money fed to it. The winner is simply the first to smash the other player's gatcha, each of which is guarded by the fearsome Musha Gundam which is the most powerful unit in the game - however, it cannot leave its station or repair itself.

Units are broken down into five basic types. There are specialist units for crossing particular terrain, which can come in useful for luring a superior unit into the water and bushwhacking them. There are two transformers able to turn quadrapedal that are weakly armed, but more difficult to hit. There are two flashy robots (with hands that float free of their bodies) that are an absolute sod to avoid. The regular robots are generally armed with a gun and a melee weapon, starting with a rod and a machine gun then working their way up through beam sabres and lasers. Finally, each player starts with a White Base which fires homing missiles and is the only unit in the game capable of artillery bombardment.

Video B - Zgok vs. Gelgoog

From there on in, the player is faced with the task of experimenting with different units and terrain types to get the best results. For example, Rick Dias has a bazooka which is low on destructive power, but packs a blast radius that makes it useful when your oppponent is hiding between the skyscrapers of a city battle. White Base's homing missiles are slow and very tough to hit with, should a much faster unit plough into you whirling a beam naginata, but lure your prey into the water and the reduced maneuverablilty will make them practically impossible to avoid. It's a personal journey of cheese, discovery and more cheese, made all the more charming by the squidgified Gundam character designs which are appealing enough to draw in even someone like me, who doesn't like giant robot anime and has never seen the original Gundam. It's a game that smells of sunny afternoons and someone else's childhood.

Two flaws bring the experience down. The first is that even those won over to the cause of mashing tiny cute robots against each other will probably be frustrated by the lethargic pace of the strategy, compared to the alarming speed with which you can get an entire army blitzed. The second is that the computer just isn't very smart, and will chuck out legions of rent-a-thug Zakus instead of saving for a better unit while you're stomping all over him with your legion of ZZ Gundams. (The waiting times are a pain in the bum too, but meh - 1987.)

Still, now that it's available on the GBA instead of the Famicom Disk System, it makes a great way to kill journeys and pop the heads of Japanese males who were alive during the NES era (trust me on this one: their faces light up like a pinball table if you wave it in front of them). Eleven maps and decent difficulty settings (even if you become unbeatable you can choose to start with a handicap while your opponent begins with an army of ubers) mean that there's never a shortage of things to do in the time it takes you to get bored of it.

What a great little slice of gaming history. Let's hope the Gamecube sequel, out this month, is even better.