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It's 1993 and America has changed a lot since the familiar days of Big Macs and The Brady Bunch. After a bloody coup, the society we once knew has fallen and been replaced by a police state controlled by a new President, the evil dictator Bangler.

With the army, police and the criminal underground all at Bangler's command, no-one dares stand in his way. Except the Ninja Warriors, two robots skilled in the art of Ninjitsu, built by a small band of rebels and sent out to assassinate Bangler and restore freedom to the galaxy...

So goes the rather unlikely storyline for The Ninja Warriors, the latest in a line of Taito coin-op conversions from Virgn and The Sales Curve (after SilkWing). This one was arguably the most difficult of the four to convert, thanks to the coin-op's innovative method of using three monitors side by side to create a Cinemascope-style playing area.

These days 16-bit gamers are practically spoilt for choice when it comes to shoot-'em-ups, sport simulations, arcade adventures, racing games... everything in fact, except from any quality beam-'em-ups.

Apart from the brilliant IK+ (which is now over a year old), there's virtually nothing to satisfy would-be Ninjas - or at least there wasn't until now.

Random Access' conversion succeeds where all the others have failed - it feels good to play. The action never lets up, as there are always plenty of things to kill, and, more importantly, the combat moves don't take five seconds to execute - one quick stab of the fire button is enough to gore an enemy soldier.

Because the combat moves can be executed so quickly, you can cut your way through a whole platoon of soldiers without too much trouble. The sampled 'urgh!' and squirt of blood that accompanies each kill adds to the fun, as does the two-player element, where the players have to cover each others' backs to survive.

The graphics are a little blotchy in places, and a wider variety of sampled sound would have been nice, but it's the strength of the gameplay that makes it what it is - one of the best beat-'em-ups to date.