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Shiver me timbers! Splice the main-brace! Walk the plank, you dirty dog! Skull And Crossbones is a tale of high adventure in the days of cut-throats, buried treasure and parrot droppings.

Domark's game concerns two pirates. One-eye and Red Dog, and their attempts to retrieve their treasure, stolen by an evil sorcerer. (Of course, they lifted the loot in the first place, but they are pirates so they're entitled to.)

One or two players can partake in this hack 'n slash scenario, playing the part of the respective pirates. Unfortunately, there's no simultaneous play, so the players have to take it in turns, swapping over when the end of a stage is reached.

You have to fight your way through all eight levels before confronting the sneaky sorcerer. Getting there takes you over ships, through harbours. and other such pirate-type places. Bad buccaneers block your every move, though, so you'll need to skewer them through the pancreas to get anywhere.

Slash 'em to ribbons and they drop a golden sovereign which can be collected to accumulate your wealth. Buried treasure can also boost up your bounty, and can be found by digging under 'X's which mark the spot.

That's really what it boils down to; fighting baddies and picking up dosh. Unfortunately both are fairly tedious. Several fighting moves have been implemented, promising much to master. In practice, though, it's far easier to run at your enemy, slash 'im, and scarper before he can get you.

Killing all the baddies in each section is compulsory. It's easy to get past them and outrun them, but you're unable to leave the screen until all have died. What makes this particularly tiresome is that on screens where there are more than one baddie, only one is active at any time. You have to wait patiently, killing them one by one, till you've run your cutlass through the lot. Picking treasure is simply a case of lining yourself up with it precisely and running over it. Each level is split into sub-sections which scroll in one direction (you can't go back on yourself). The next section is reached by collecting a red token that only appears when everyone else has been killed.

The graphics are quite cute. The sprites are well defined and look like pirates, the backgrounds look like ships or buildings. Everything looks fine - till things start moving. The animation is chronic and the scrolling is awful.

The music, which changes for the different scenes, is excellent. It's quite jolly and inspires adventure. There are no sound effects whatsoever, though, but you don't really miss them.

Skull And Crossbones lacks variety. The gameplay is dull, and once you've mastered the fighting technique (i.e. hit and run) it's just a case of patiently waiting for all your adversaries to appear before topping them. It looks nice at first, but it soon becomes an incredible bore.

Skull And Crossbones seems initially impressive, with colourful graphics and beefy music, but the action is unbelievably dull and interest soon wanes.

Reach the fourth level.

Graphics 70%
Nicely drawn, but very badly animated sprites.

Sonics 88%
There are no spot fx, but the in-game music is excellent.

Grab Factor 60%
Looks nice enough, and is easy enough to master.

Staying Power 40%
After your first couple of goes, you won't want to play again.

Overall 48%
Skull And Crossbones is dull. Initial good impressions soon give way to tedium.