Scalpel, scissors, swab, funny little metal tweezers attached by a wire to the patient's nose--welcome to Operation, the fun game for all the family... of surgeons. It's a delightfully simple, yet fiendishly fiddly game, the objective of which is to remove the comically designed internal organs from a supine patient with a big red nose. Pick a card from the pack, see which operation you've been selected to perform, pull up your facemask and begin. Each operation earns you a certain amount of Monopoly-style cash, the more procedures you succeed with the more you earn; you may even find yourself to be the richest doc on the block by the end of the game. But hold on there, this isn't easy money for any old cowboy quack to make, one slip and the tweezers will touch the side setting off the buzzer and making the patient's nose flash, then it's back to medical school for you. Operation really is a classic. Even having been on the market for over 20 years it's still fresh and exciting: a hands-on sensory experience in a virtual world. It demands real concentration--just catch a glimpse of the look on your trainee doctors' faces as they try to remove the "butterfly" from the stomach--and it has a surprisingly realistic feel. Even if the buzzer does grate on the nerves a little after a while, setting it off really does give you a genuine heart-racing thrill. And parents will still be asking "Can I have a go?" and laughing at the novelty names of the organs ("spare rib", "adam's apple"... err, "bread basket"?). Before long, beads of sweat will be forming on your brow too. Ultimately, it's a great game, as long as you've got patients. Hang on..., I think he's flatlined... Nurse! --Paul Eisinger