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Shock! Horror! The mayor's daughter has been kidnapped by the Mad Gear Gang. Luckily Mayor Haggar happens to be a former champion streetfighter (!) and - with optional friend - goes to the rescue, duffing up anyone in his path.

So what sets Final Fight apart from the other three million beat-'em-ups currently on the market? Unfortunately, not a lot. Those who have played the Capcom coin-op will know what I mean when I say it featured large sprites - they were blimmin' huge! Not only that, but they were excellently drawn, well animated and ran extremely quickly. These jumbo sprites have made it to all home computer conversions, except for the Commodore 64.

The tiny sprites are well drawn, but hideously animated. When fighting, they tend to twist themselves into impossible shapes like rubber bendy men. Whey they come together it's darn near impossible to see what's going on. If that wasn't enough, they are so samey that you often end up fighting your friend by mistake! Each multi-loaded level is exactly the same as the last except for the backgrounds, which range from the very well drawn to the sprite-destroyingly garish.

The entire game is plagued by poor collision detection. Falling characters often fly through seemingly solid objects, and when aiming your jumping kick you can knock down your opponent when appearing to miss him completely!

Controls are hellishly sluggish, taking ages to respond to your commands and occasionally not responding at all. Of course, the real Achilles heel of fight games is the one-move-kills-all syndrome. Final Fight is as clear an example of this as you would want to avoid. All you have to do is wait for your opponent to come to you, pull down on the joystick and press fire - your jumping kick will defeat anything and everything the game can throw at you! It really is that easy.

Other methods of attack and collectable weapons are available, but never needed. Basically, it's yawn yawn yawn!

Presentation 56%
Choice of fighters, simultaneous two-player mode.

Graphics 40%
One or two nice drawings, even if they do animate badly.

Sound 32%
Dull title tune and weak FX.

Hookability 35%
Totally predictable.

Lastability 15%
I doubt if you'll load it twice.

Overall 22%
No thanks.