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You are the one and only Judge Dredd and Mega City One's last chance to stop crime sweeping through the streets. Now at last you can be the 2000 AD comic book hero as you patrol the streets on your lawmaster bike.

You are armed with your "lawgiver" gun that can fire six different projectiles which you use to "arrest" the perps of such evil crimes as murder, tapping (mugging), stookie glanding and tobacco smoking.

A sector of your patrol area of Mega City One warns of any crimes in progress. Move the bike over a crime to rush to the scene. The scene now changes to the ramps, lifts and swamps thatform the city which is populated by all sorts of low life. You are here to arrest a murderer, and since gunning down innocent people is frowned upon, you'd better get on with the job. Since murder is a minor crime you decide to give the perp a chance and select the Halt response level. This shouts "halt" at the perp when you press the fire button. Warn, the next level up, fires a warning shot but the most common mode used is Kill.

Pressing the Enter key swaps between three different displays that appear at the bottom of the screen which are the crime report, informing you of the perp's last reported whereabouts, your current location and display showing your response level, bullet type, score and energy gauge.

Finally, you track him down in the rat-infested swamp and yell halt! He has not ony ignores your command he shoots at you. This is no problem to a representative of the Justice Department as you swap to KILL level, select normal bullets and gun him down. They all go quietly, eventually!

For more persistent perps, you can make use of the specialist bullets such as armour-piercing, that can fire through the game's platforms, incendiary and high explosive that pack an extra bunch, ricochet for bouncing around corners (make sure you don't hit yourself) and the heat seekers that always get their man.

Unfortunately, you haven't got time to shoot it out with every perp as you have to get back to the sector map and onto another crime. If you don't you'll lose the game as soon as eight crimes appear in your sector.

You'll soon find out that even Judges can be killed, but luckily this isn't fatal as a replacement is rushed to the sector.

At times it's hard to remember that you're supposed to be the good guy as you can arrest perps by gunning them down. You can also gain bonus points by ridding the city of other vermin such as rats and droids that roam free in the seedy side of the city such as the swamp and the Norman Tebbit block. However, you'll soon know when you've shot something you shouldn't have, as your score will plummet.

The game captures the atmosphere of crime fighting in the future although it has strayed from the comic character which will no doubt annoy the connoisseurs. The rest of us will love it. "Go on perp, make my day!"

A Monster Hit.