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Yet again only one person has the courage to save civilisation, and this time it's Black Tiger. The job: to battle Satan's little devils and three evil dragons, while rescuing little white bearded mandarin type chappies who appear to have been turned to stone.

Our diminutive hero starts his adventure at the entrance of a great cavern. Naturally, he's heavily armed and there's no turning back. The first enemy nasty approaches. A few quick jabs on the fire button unleashes a large mace and a volley of daggers... no more Mr. Bad Guy. I followed that up with a graceful leap from platform to platform and failed the jump three times. Eventually I made it past without knowing whether to blame the joystick or the game. After the next leap I realised it was the jumps that were going to take getting used to.

When a bad guy is creamed he leaves a coin behind him, which can be spent later on in the shops. The shops are cleverly disguised as the aforementioned stone geezers. Running into one with either result in some cash being dropped or you paying a visit to the shop. Inside your cash can be spent on extra armour, keys, Coke (the drink), and increased weapon power. Buying keys and coke isn't too important as they tend to crop up frequently through the levels.

The character graphics move with some ease, and they look even better when they're not moving. Once you start running about the scrolling starts to go to pot. Smooth is a word I would not use about Black Tiger.

The action arrives in over-the-top spasms. For a while nothing happens, then hordes of critters arrive out of nowhere and help create a confused mess in one part of the screen. Now and then some rather emaciated birds hover overhead adding yet another irritant.

One of Black Tiger's major failings is the lack of action and smoothness in the gameplay. This is always one of the problems in arcade conversions. Whilst this was overcome in games like Strider and Forgotten Worlds, Black Tiger falters quite badly with a complete mismatch of speed and action.

This is not one of the outstanding conversions of all time, especially when you compare it to some of the competition which appeared pre-Christmas, particularly Ghouls 'N Ghosts to which it is closest in character. Pretty average in all respects.