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Capcom seem pretty on the ball these days with their range of arcade games and we should be seeing them on the 8-bit machines quite soon. In Japan, they have not wasted any time in converting to the Nintendo, the latest conversion is Double Dragon.

The scene is (yawn!) nothing new, an evil bod has kidnapped the missus and you have to get to his hideout to rescue her. There are three options at game start: one/two player or two player in a head-to-head beat-'em-up; in this option you can choose the characters from a list of six (Billy/Will/Rowper/Kinda/Chin and Abobo). This is fun and you can work off the days aggression by beating up your favourite game character.

There are four missions to work through, each mission having a variety of scenes. You can leap, kick, punch and even run away when trying to outsmart the Chinese opposition. They come in a variety of forms, from Chinese sisters trying to whip you to death, hunky musclemen who tower over you, barrel and knife throwing long-haired 70's revivalists flairs and all (or they could be Chinese!) to baseball-wielding.

If you manage to knock over a thug with a weapon, he will drop it and you can pick it up and use it.

You have three lives, a timer and an energy guage to watch. You can move left to right to get through a mission but there are scenes where the screen will not scroll on until you have defeated the enemies on that screen, when you have done this a thumbs-up appears and you can continue on.

Mission one has you on the streets taking on the whipping sisters, and Ken Livingstone Chinese lookalikes (honest!). This leads to an exit and you then enter mission two with much of the same, more enemies, walls to climb and bat-wielding opposition.

Mission three starts off in a forest (very nice graphics!) which leads to caverns and eventually to a cliff face peppered with ledges you have to get around. Mission four is the big one. Here you have made it to the hideout and everything gets thrown at you, to get to your other hand you have to beat all the previous enemies in consecutive order without a break (I made it to the big boss, but he just pipped me at the post!).

All in all, Double Dragon has some very tasty graphics and has got a good solid feel to it (although it does flicker in places!) sound does tend to grate on a bit but is bearable. Definitely one of the better conversions for the Nintendo that will hopefully not be too long in getting to the shops over here.