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What is the point in a movie like True Lies? Mainly to teach you right from wrong in the good old fashioned American way. You see baddies, from the Middle East and other such places, like to slap women about the face. Arnie teaches them that you should slap men instead. And the baddies want to possess nuclear weapons, which is also wrong, since only Americans should have them.

This Game Gear conversion is morality in minuscule, with Arnie doling out punishment with a variety of weapons, and avoiding the shots of those with whom he shares a difference of opinion. Just the kind of back-of-the-mag affair known as an on-deadline review spread.

One choice the game offers is weapon choice. Icons dotted around the play area offer limited ammunition for a variety of quick or wide firing weapons, from Uzis to shotguns.

Based on the Beam game which was based on the Arnie movie.

Take Arnie through lots of scrolling levels, killing folk as he goes.

Strangely enough for a member of the CIA, Arnie is not supposed to hit any innocent civilians. Not what we've heard, mate. Anyway in game land, hitting one of the unarmed characters trolling by is punished with a slap on the wrist, and if you maim enough, you may even get taken off the case!

The game uses the scenes of the movie, as did the similar Megadrive version. The $100m squeezes into flat overhead renditions of the chateau, shopping mall and park that Arnie roamed through, but without the horses and hi-tech equipment, and no Jamie-Lee Curtis sub-plot. There are snow and skiers though.

The movie didn't change the face of cinema and the game sure ain't going to alter the path of Game Gear gaming. Beam have produced a workable conversion of their own rather limited Megadrive effort, which uses the same locations, but none of the plot ements of the film.

It's the sort of cart to bang in for five minutes now and then, but since the Game Gear has thrown up some real classics lately (with more to come), why bother?

After knocking about with this for a while, I decided to go back and have a look at the Megadrive version. Yup, same game, same idea and not that much difference in the graphics, save a loss of detail. It's just that the previous game was not that much fun, and was pretty generously reviewed at the time.

A fast, explosive movie is reduced to a leaden plot round artificially created maze levels, with the most basic of key-finding requirements passing for a "puzzle" element.

The basic shooting is not even that much fun as, as Gus says, the slow character movement makes much enemy fire extremely difficult to avoid. It also slows the game down to a crawl, apart from the faster sections like the ski-slope. Why bother when quality alternatives are on offer?

Graphics 64%
P. Crisper than a bacon frazzle.
N. Crisply lacking detail.

Animation 60%
N. Little animation on the very small sprites.

Music 62%
N. Of little consequence.

Effects 66%
N. Of even less consequence.

Playability 61%
P. Simple game design and accessible action.
N. Not inspiring to play.

Lastability 53%
N. Boredom sets in very early.

Overall 59%
A whimpering game of a roaring (but silly) movie.