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Yo, the guy in this game is almost as big and bad as me! He's no ordinary street-wise punk, no sir, he's the leader of a street gang. The most competitive sport on the American city streets ever to appear. You are Micky Spatsburg, ex cop and brain surgeon who has to cross the dangerous streets of New York in a desperate bid to reach the east side to save the life of a small child who desperately needs surgery. (Their plot, not mine).

As a game, Street Gang is a flipscreen affair. You've got to get to the right hand side of the screen, beat up all the baddies and avoid the bullets, and it looks really nice. So it should, because the graphics are by none other than budget supremo, Colin 'Joe Blade 1 & 2, Deviants, Thing on a Spring, Brat Attack' Swinbourne. Yeeey! Shame the gameplay doesn't match up to the graphics.

As you move from left to right, assailants run on from both sides of the screen. Regular hard guys just run across the screen, some of them stopping to wave a fist in your direction. Armed gunmen run about, stopping sometimes to take a shot in your direction. As in real life, bullets aren't a problem. All you have to do to avoid one is jump into the air.

At various points along the way, you find lots of spare weapons, just left lying around casually. Things like knives and baseball bats adorn the sidewalks. In the rough and tumble back streets of New York, even the litter is lethal. All the extra weapons seem to do is to extend your reach a little and make your graphic look more ferocious.

Now, the graphics. They're fab. All the sprites are large and well detailed and cartoony. The backgrounds are quite nicely laid out as well, and guess what, in colour mode there's tons of colour clash. Thankfully you can change between colour and mono backgrounds at the touch of a button.

The problem with the game? it's far too easy. It seems that if you keep jumping from left to right, you can't be hit by bullets and you avoid all the thugs. This is not good. I got to level three on my first go. This is also not good. The levels are only five screens long. This is the pits.

Another fine graphical effort from Mr Swinbourne, but a poor attempt at a game. Shame really.

Label: Players Author: Kevin Parker, Colin Swinbourne Price: £1.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Nice graphics, shame about the face, or something like that.