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It was kind of a slow day at the office, and then a guy with a face like the business end of a sweeping brush comes over to me and dumps a package on my desk. I flip Rob Swan ten for his trouble, rip open the envelope and empty it onto the floor. Hmm, some computer disks from that cute dame at US Gold.

Seems in this game I play the part of a Private Eye in San Francisco, circa 2330. A university professor, name of Carl Linsky, has taken a walk off the Golden Gate Bridge and his daughter wants me to investigate. The fuzz say it was suicide, but she reckons otherwise.

I climb into my speeder, punch in a navigation code for the old man's apartment and engage the autopilot. As the speeder lifts off I get a load of the in-flight 3D vector graphic view of California. Fancy.

When the speeder touches down, I appear in Linsky's place. I move the guy on the screen around the room, and as he finds stuff, I get to examine it or take it in case it turns out to be a clue. The chess set minus the bishop looks suspicious, and then I come across some notes which provide a couple of suspects - one, an embittered lover, another a humiliated student. There's also a note bearing a death threat. So maybe it wasn't suicide. I stash the loot inside my coat and head off to my next port of call - a warehouse Linsky leased ten months before his death.

When I arrive I'm greeted by a bunch of robotic hoods, but luckily their markmanship programming isn't as good as mine and I get inside unpunctured. Amongst the crates, there's a newspaper clipping about the death of Professor Cal Davis and a warning to get out from Sonny Fletcher. Have to get my secretary. Vanessa, to look those two up.

It seems Linsky, amongst others, was conducting dangerous experiments funded by Gideon Enterprises. Something real big is up, and it's up to me to find out who's behind it and stop them. But where should I go next...?

Wow - is this engrossing or what? I've just spent a whole weekend playing this game and I still can't put it down. Mean Streets claims to be an interactive movie, and the way the plot unfolds as you follow up leads and the narrative style really does make you feel like you're in a detective flick.

Effective digitised pictures appear whenever you meet people or use the videophone, and the latter is also accompanied by some decent sampled speech. The only slight downer is the 3D scenery graphics, which are a little jerky, and not very detailed.

Aside from that, Mean Streets is really well produced, and well worth buying if you're after an unusual arcade adventure.

Very similar to the ST version, apart from slightly crisper speech and digitised pics.