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Fed up of being a puny seven stone weakling and having sand kicked in your face by some muscle-bound bully? Well, now's the chance to get your own back... by playing The Movie Monster Game. Step into the skin of one of six huge, mutated monsters and wreak havoc in one of six famous cities - London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Moscow or Tokyo.

Choose your monster from Godzilla, a tall fire-breathing reptile; the fat stomping Mr. Meringue; a giant wasp called Sphectra; The Glog, a giant radioactive blob; Tarantus, a huge mutated arachnid, and a giant renegade robot that goes by the name of Mechatron. All of them have special characteristics - some can walk through water, others are immensely strong and some have the ability to freeze everything with a single piercing scream. It's up to you to decide which monster best suits your playing style.

Five different scenarios are provided: Destroy Landmark; Escape; Lunch; Berserk and Search. Each has a different objective. In Escape, you have to try to get out of the city before the army destroys you. Berserk has you smashing down as many buildings and stomping on as many people and vehicles as possible. Lunch is where you have to eat as much as possible [Ahh, the good old days of Gary Liddon - Ed]. In Destroy Landmark, you have to kick down a specified famous building while Search sets you on the trail of your baby who's hidden under one of the buildings in the city.

Once the selections have been made, the scene switches to the inside of a cinema. The lights fade, a brief set of instructions and an introduction to the forthcoming action appears on the 'cinema' screen. The game begins. Your monster appears in the middle of the main display area and the landscape scrolls around him as the joystick is moved.

The status area under the main play-screen reveals the score and game time elapsed. Next to these readouts, the monster's endurance level is shown as a bar that diminishes to a fatal zero as the army's bullets and missiles land home. The endurance bar increases if the monster manages to remain unscathed for a period of time, although the speed of the recovery depends on the monster selected.

The action icon shows the specialised action currently selected (pressing the space bar cycles through the monster's capabilities). Some of these actions include spin web (Tarantus), spew firetlaser, scream and atomize up (essential if you are to destroy helicopters and jets).

Pressing the fire button activates the selected mode, although using it too much can tire the monster out. If you're playing Lunch, a hunger indicator diminishes if you don't eat and a proximity indicator appears during Search and Destroy Landmark.

Each city is surrounded by an invisible boundary and when you reach it you're asked if you want to leave the city. Leaving a city causes the scene to revert back to the cinema screen, which displays a text conclusion to your adventure along with your score, and the rampage comes to a swift end. If you don't leave the city you can go back and romp about a bit more, but keep an eye on your endurance. Monsters may be tough, but they get tired too...

This is a fun game which is really enjoyable to play for a short while. After playing through the six scenarios, frustration sets in - you can't really have a very long game and always have to make your way out of the city after a very short period of playing. It's brilliant fun stomping on tanks and kicking in skyscrapers, so why limit the gameplay?

It would have been miles better if they'd given you three monsters so you could play it more like an arcade game. The graphics are pretty decent - some of the monster sprites are really great and the sound is fine. Give it a try if the idea sounds appealing, otherwise wait until someone converts the arcade game Rampage.

I was expecting great things from this game but it's turned out to be a disappointment. Running amok in one of six cities, demolishing buildings and crushing people and vehicles underfoot is fun for an hour or so, but due to the slow pace of the game I soon lost interest.

Movie Monster should have been fast, frantic and more action-packed, but it isn't; it strikes me as being more of a simulation than a playable arcade game, which is a shame as the potential for a brilliant game has been wasted.

This is what I've been waiting to see for quite some time. None of your namby pamby saving the universe lark here, just good old fashioned violence. Stomp, crush, smash, scream - all great fun for a few games. Then it seems to wear off. After all, there's only so much building stomping you can do in a lifetime. The graphics are fun, the sound is adequate, but overall I don't think you'll play this too often.

Presentation 83%
Awkward loading system, but well presented with plenty of options.

Graphics 81%
Neat monster sprites and convincing, but repetitive backdrops.

Sound 75%
Numerous simple tunes and suitable stompy spot effects.

Hookability 84%
Initially great fun stomping everything into the ground...

Lastability 65%
But the limited gameplay palls after a while.

Value Of Money 69%
Expensive when you consider the limited gameplay.

Overall 75%
A brilliant idea which should have made a better game.