Let me take you now to the land of the East where everybody makes fortunes out of hi-technology and can knock you dead with one strike of their little finger.

Kung Fu places you in the Orient, facing a lethal opponent whom you must defeat only to be confronted by another kamikaze fighter bent on your annihilation.

The four strokes at your disposal are a chop, punch, front kick and side kick. These are used to hit your adversary or to parry his attacks but can only be done one at a time.

You have three lives which are shown by clenched fists in the bottom left of the screen. Your strength is indicated by one of the fists which runs through the colours of the spectrum as you gradually weaken under the hail of blows. Your opponent also has an indicator which decreases but, like you, he can be felled by one undefended hit.

If you can survive enough bouts and score highly enough you move on to more skilled men and eventually to more than one opponent. This is far from easy since even at the first stage outwitting your enemy appears to depend a lot on luck.

Each movement is animated in great detail and the end of each fight can be replayed in a fantastic slow-motion sequence. Oriental music accompanies the action and the demo screen of three fighters practicing their moves.

You can play against either the computer or another person. The latter option provides more satisfaction, as you'd expect.

The game loses some of its addictiveness through its sheer difficulty but the excellent graphics and sound are some compensation. It may not be an all-time hit but you'll certainly get a kick out of it!

I don't usually approve of violence in computer games, but this was a pretty enjoyable rumble. The figures were very well animated, and even though you're limited to four vicious movements it looked very good on-screen.

I did start to get a little bored though, when I realised I had a good chance of success if I just stood there and repeated the same movements. However, it's not so easy on higher levels.

The sound was pleasantly oriental, but terribly repetitive.

The sound and animation are superb. The way the characters kick, chop and punch each other to death, while a tuneful Japanese song rolls on in the background, is quite enthralling.

Despite this, I found my Kung Fu expert (or should I say amateur) failing to do his bit for mankind. This was mainly due to the fact that the keys were somewhat oddly placed (and not definable), while the joystick made things quite impossible.

All in all, success seemed to depend rather more on luck than skill.

Bob Wade