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"Farewell, the paradise Kingdom of Alulu, for the monsters have taken your soul and crushed it in their mighty grip. The city is all but destroyed, your ships are burned, and lying wrecked at the bottom of the sea, and the legendary stone "Dragon Blue Eyes" is lost. His magical gem, source of all peace and tranquility in the realm of Alulu, must be recovered before evil forever makes your world its home."

That was the message that inspired the Chiki Chiki Boys, better known as the Mega Twins, into action and may prod you into helping them save their dying world.

Guide either boy across the Kingdom of Alulu destroying everything in their path. Collect money to buy better weapons and power-ups to defeat the evil King and save the world in Sega's excellent conversion of the popular Capcom coin-op.

Before the quest begins, the player is asked to choose a twin and give him a name. From here on the search for the "Dragon Blue Eyes" ensues across the three main districts of the Alulu kingdom. Only by finding the precious stone is the whereabouts of the evil King's hideout revealed, and the quest for peace continued.

Take the three districts in any order but the following battle stages are fought through in a set format. By the way, don't expect to get away with playing right the way through on Easy level. Capcom have included a clause whereby you have to play the game on at least the Normal level to see the whole game!

After each of the end-of-level guardians are defeated, a helpful blonde-haired lass offers a selection of useful items which you can buy with money plundered from defeated enemies.

The largest amounts are gained from the largest of enemies, the small change snatched from the wimps. There are also many hidden chests throughout the Kingdom that contain either hordes of coins or Vitality pills. This is what's on offer:

1. Sword
   The sword is a more powerful replacement for the twins' basic weapon. The shop offers the chance to upgrade the sword three times, though the prices are expensive. Expect to pay 25000 for the top of the range chopper!
2. Magic Pearls
   These vary in price depending on the power of the magic within. On the early levels magic costs around 1000 credits. Expect to pay far more later on! The best policy is to use the magic sparingly throughout the game and save your cash for items such as swords.
3. Vitality Pills
   These restore lost energy and are available in red and white or blue and white. The former replenishes the twins' energy bars almost to the full whereas the latter, being less expensive, only refills a fraction.
   
   Just enough to make it to the next hidden chest and, hopefully, another free vitality pill.
4. Shield
   The shield's also upgradable three times and the prices reflect the ones set by the swords. Bear in mind that the benefits of the shields are nothing to sneer at. They extend the twins' life meter and don't cost as much as an extra life but effectively do the same job in the long run.
5. Extra Life
   There are no continues in this game, the only chance you get to carry on is to have a spare twin handy to take over if one dies. Life is by no means cheap!

The boys possess enough vim and vigour to bravely face their foes alone but they also know the whereabouts of certain clam shells containing pearls of great power. There are four kinds of magical gem, each presented in a different colour to save confusion:

1. Flaming Fire
   When the power of the green sheels are unleashed a flaming fire scorches the evil forces to the ground.
2. Typhoon
   Blue clams contain pearls of calamitous consequence. They disclose the power of the typhoon to break the enemy with a powerful wind.
3. Bound
   The red molluscs give the power of the bound, a hyper-destructive array of orange orbs that dance around the screen destroying enemies before fading away into nothingness.
4. Bomb
   The orange shells contain pearls that reward the boys with powerful bombs with a short fuse which explode in a shower of multi-coloured stars - extremely powerful allies.

Yes! The first Capcom game to appear on the Megadrive for a-a-ages and it's brilliant! After the initial disappointment of the missing two-player option I soon began to count my blessings as I realised just how good a conversion Sega have made of the coin-op.

Of course, the best conversion of the worst coin-op in the world doesn't warrant purchase but Chiki Chiki Boys, aka Mega Twins to us Westerners, is really an excellent game! It is full of delightful presentational features and humourous touches which all add up to something that not only looks marvellous but plays well too.

Okay, so the gameplay is so obvious that even a performing chimp could get the hang of it; however, staying alive isn't so easy.

With the equivalent of only one continue and a high level of challenge on the Hard level, this cutesy platformer, as Capcom intended, caters for skillful platformers as well as beginners.

Like the superb Ghouls 'N Ghosts, Chiki Chiki Boys offers some interesting twists to the accepted platform routine, all the characters have strong personalities that are accentuated by wonderful attention to detail and complex animation. Even now, after completing the game, I still enjoy playing it to behold the graphics and enjoy the sounds of another Capcom classic.

I'm afraid I didn't find Chiki Chiki Boys as cosmic as Paul obviously did. Sure, the graphics are all very sweet with big, bold sprites, a handful of neat, smooth animation and a very cutesy look to the whole scenario.

But there's just something missing from the whole package (notably a two-player option) which results in an acceptable platform offering but nothing to shout home about.

In fact, the whole thing reminded me of the Harry Enfield character Tim - nice but dim. Don't get me wrong, it's worth a play and the high difficulty setting sets a fair challenge to even hardened gamers but it's not that big, not that clever and I wasn't all that impressed.

Presentation 91%
The game is packged with arcade quality presentation screens and there's also the option screen that allows marked differences with alterations to the difficulty settings.

Graphics 90%
P. Not quite arcade perfect but still a find example of cute Japanese characterisation on the Megadrive. Massive sprites, smooth animation plus some excellent backdrops.

Sound 91%
P. The music suits the game perfectly and is a rousing blend of ballad and boister!

Playability 87%
P. Easy to pick up, hard to put down. Can't say better than that, can you?

N. Only having one continue means many returns to the start of the game, especially on the Hard setting, which gets very demoralising.

Lastability 84%
P. The quality of the game means it's going to survive for quite a while. The Hard difficulty setting takes some beating!

N. Once you've played it through, that's all there is to see.

Overall 85%
A sound platform game which probably would have scored much higher had the two-player feature not been sorely missing.