Life's tough after you've been turned from a skinny gimp into a genetically deformed super-strong mutant. Just what do you do? Run away from everyone in case you scare them or dedicate your new-found powers into saving the world from environmental doom? As Toxie, the Toxic Crusader, you've opted for the latter, no matter how grotesque and Harrodesque you may have become.

And a good thing too, because gangs of Radiation Rangers have sent to Earth in order to wipe out Toxie and his Crusader chums. After they've achieved their foul objective, their evil master, the Smogulons, intend to colonise Earth as their own, killing every human on the face of the planet! Arghhh!

Your task is to run along, beating the hell out of any Radiation Rangers and Smogulons who dare to cross your path. Make use of radioactive power-ups to boost your performance and kick some evil ass!

A little like the Turtles coin-op, Toxic Crusaders is based on the sad Saturday morning cartoon.

Run along, collect power-ups and beat up Radiation Rangers and evil Smogulons! Make the most of your three lives!

The eponymous Toxic Crusaders are made up of three different genetic mutants. Along with Toxie himself, there's Nozone and Junkyard - all of which are selectable on the options screen.

The difference between each of the Crusaders is quite subtle, but completing the game with all three characters does add ever-so-slightly to the lastability, which can't be bad.

Beat up or blast the meanies and they leave behind special power-ups for Toxie or one of his pals to collect. Each has a different effect, for example, black power-ups endow you with extra lives. Red power-ups improve your weaponry. Your hand-to-hand attacks are boosted by white boosting blobs. Slimy skates come in handy for zooming around, and these are collected by getting blue power blobs. Good, eh?

Dotted throughout the game are decent vehicles you can climb into and use. On level one there are two - a jet-powered skateboard and a helicopter. Both are armed with machine guns, but the helicopter offers more protection from meanies and also has a payload of bombs you can drop on the radioactive meanies! Later on in the game, there's a jet-ski to jump into, which is armed with deadly weaponry too! That can't be bad, eh?

The number of different attacks in Toxic Crusaders is quite impressive. Toxie's mop comes in handy for bouncing meanies around, and fires off bursts of energy to disable the radioactive meanies.

Nozeon spits hot globs and has similar energy attacks to Toxie. Junkyard has these strange energy-related offensive moves himself, and supplements it with his fists!

At the end of each level, there's an anormous boss just waiting to be destroyed. At the end of the second level is a large fire-breathing dragon with two heads!

Arghhh! Other meanies include a dude in a hover car (who fancies gunning you down in cold blood!) and of course, the villain of the piece himself - the twisted Czar Zoster (eek!)

When I first saw this I thought it was cack. The graphics range from quite good to sad mockeries, and the sound is similarly average - d'oh!

However, in the gameplay department, Toxic Crusaders is quite good. There is a healthy range of decent power-up weaponry available for each of the three characters and I especially liked the idea of being able to commandeer some of the enemy vehicles Ikari Warriors-style. But Toxic Crusaders is ruined by the fact that in easy mode, it's very easy indeed.

On my first go, when I supposed to be working out attack strategies and getting used to the controls, I was actually smacking the hell out of the enemies with very little effort. My advice is to ignore the 'Easy' setting or else.

It's quite similar to Captain America and the Avengers, also reviewed this month, but out of the two, I think that Captain America is probably the better of the two. However, for the ultimate in combat games, save an extra fiver and get Streets Of Rage II.

The first thing that hit me when I first started playing is the sheer speed of the gameplay - fast or what! Like Rich, on first glance I thought this game was pretty naff but after a few minutes I soon got into it and the only average graphics and sound didn't seem to matter that much.

It's really good fun and there are heaps of neat power-ups to grab, baddies to splatter and enemy vehicles to ruthlessly hi-jack. There's a fair amount of difference too between the techniques of the various super-heroes which makes for a more varied bash.

Of course, licking up gallons of stinking toxic waste to make for a clean and safer world might not be your cup of tea but wouldn't it be great if the culprits for Earth's pollution were forced to do the same thing?

I thought this was much better than Richard's suggested alternative, Captain America, although it is too simple to pile through on 'Easy' setting. Overall though, not one to be sniffed at.

Presentation 78%
P. A decent range of options in the game and a nice polished feel to the game itself. Hurrah! N. The intermission screens are a tad poor though. Boo!

Graphics 69%
P. Well, erm, at least the scrolling is pretty smooth and the action fast... N. But there's loads of unnecessary flicker and some Master System-esque backdrops. Doh!

Sound 65%
P. Some pretty funky tunes help holly up the atmosphere no end. N. However, some of the effects are pretty sad. Oh dear.

Playability 75%
P. Toxic Crusaders is immediately fun and addictive and should have you glued to the Megadrive for quite a while. N. The controls are difficult to master for some people.

Lastability 67%
P. There are quite a few levels to pound your way through... N. But the 'Easy' level offers very little in the way of challenge. You should have this one licked in a few hours.

Overall 70%
Fun and playable, Toxic Crusaders suffers from some rather awful graphics and a lack of lastability. A bit more though and this could have been a lot better.