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Plasticine. Great invention, huh? Whoever came up with plasticine must have thought, "Hey! This stuff's great! It's going to revolutionise the British film industry. So now when we go to the Oscars, America has Sharon Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Jim Carey and we have cartoons of a plasticine dog and his plasticine owner and other plasticine animals!"

Gradually, everyone on telly is being replaced with plasticine - take Ulrika Jonsson. And we love it. Apart from the Morph bits, was there ever a reason to watch Tony Hart's crappy picture show? Someone must have thought of Battle Monsters, thought of plasticine and said, "Yeah, Take Hart kicks asssss!" But since there wasn't enough plasticine to make all the fighters, they got some blokes to dress up in pantomime clobber as well, digitise them and - Shazam! - we have a beat-'em-up.

Although bouts are played within the confines of an arena, like most beat-'em-ups, the area covers more than a single screen. To give you freedom of movement, the game attempts to scale the action, zooming in and out depending on the distance between fighters.

It's fast and smooth, but somewhat confusing in two-player mode. It's also possible to jump between several levels of high platforms on most arenas.

Sega UK are giving this a wide berth by all accounts, because it looked like being a real dog. Well, it's not as bad as I first feared, but hardly up to the gameplay quality of Mortal Kombat 2 on the Megadrive.

Graphic-wise, there's quite a lot of good stuff here, some of the moves are quite nice, like the smooth character morphing, and the scaling works reasonably well. The problem comes from the way the game just seems to have been thrown together. There has been no real attempt to fine tune the characters or add subtleties to the control. It literally is "hack 'n slash" in the least sophisticated sense.

Not the worst import choice, given things like Pretty Fighter, but the beat-'em-up scene will throw up better than this in time.

I'm sorry, but I've got no time for this at all. Yes, it has smart digitised graphics, unusual characters and fancy zooming, but as far as the fighting itself goes it's about two years too late. The characters are unwieldy, the special moves are slow and cumbersome, and it plods along at such a slow pace it's like watching two fighters battle it out in treacle.

Also, what may have seemed like a hilarious idea at first in adding a huge chicken and a bloke folding his head falls sadly flat when their moves barely differ from the more 'normal' opponents. This is another average Saturn title, out to tempt those too impatient to wait for MKII or III, and there's no way it can even compete with the Midway classic. As such, it is destined to be filed alongside the likes of Gotha, Gale Racer and Side Pocket II in the "utterly dire, bury at once" tray. Here's to the imminent arrival of Kintaro and Co...

Graphics 81%
P. Quite a lot of creatively designed characters, crisply digitised.
N. Some backgrounds are gloomy and fuzzy.

Animation 83%
P. Nice character animation and fast screen scaling.
N. This display zooms too much and is often confusing.

Music 78%
P. The music on the presentational screens is good, with South American tribal drums.

Effects 69%
N. The samples are truly appalling, within the standard of 16-bit machines.

Playability 74%
P. The range of moves and characters gives some playing interest.
N. Lacks any real finesse. A bit clumsily realised.

Lastability 85%
P. No real star quality to bring you back after you've explored the cast.

Overall 60%
A bit of a monster mish-mash, with Saturn hardware tricks taking the place of real gaming quality. Best avoided on balance.