This latest Martial Arts extravaganza gets off to a good start with Ninja Warriors, originally a Virgin release and a pretty good one too (79%, Issue 57). In it, a robotic Ninja fights to free the population of a future world from a tyrannical ruler called Bangler.

Despite the name, it's not high-kicks and karate chops you need, rather a fast trigger finger to time your knife slashes. There's also a limited supply of throwing stars, and believe me you need them. Sales Curve made a nice job with the conversion and it's still worth a whirl on the old C2N.

Double Dragon II is another one from the Virgin stable, featuring the return of Billy and Jimmy Lee to avenge the death of their friend Marian. In the original game, the Black Warriors kidnapped Marian and the Lee bros rushed to the rescue, killing (they thought) all of the Black Warriors.

But a woman called Linda survived and through black magic reanimated the leader Willy and most of the gang members. Five levels must be battled through before Billy and Jimmy can find the remains of Marian and resurrect her in preparation for Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones. The graphics are rather blocky, but there's some nicely varied backdrops which helped it win 72% in Issue 57. It's still pretty good now, unspectacular but with the difficulty set just right.

Shinobi stars Joe Musashi, the most famous graduate of a secret oriental Ninja school. Whilst at the annual graduation ceremony, Bwah Foo appears, immobilises Joe and kidnaps the whole junior class in revenge for them always making fun of his name.

Rescuing the brats takes you through action five levels of oriental action, but like Ninja Warriors there's no hand-to-hand fighting. Our hero this time has an unlimited supply of shurikens to wipe out the baddies. There's a nice bonus sub-game and it adds up to a really playable game (86%, Issue 54).

And, finally, we have a much needed spot of humour: Dynamite Dux features yet another dastardly kidnapping, but this time the would-be rescuer is a duck! The perspective is novel too, but combat is again limited - mainly being a case of timing your mega-punch.

You can also power-up with weapons such as flamethrowers, useful to fry strange creatures such as Sumo Pigs, Snappy Dogs and Boxing Crocs. Activision's conversion dropped the two player mode but otherwise dept faithful to the rather repetitive gameplay of the Sega coin-op.

On its own it wasn't too well received - 57%, Issue 59 - but it lightens the compilation up quite nicely.

A nice value-for-money package filled with some above-average coin-op conversions. Ironically, only one of the games, Double Dragon III, has any hand-to-hand fighting, but there's still enough violence for most people.