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Hercules has been launched at a time when owners of Barbarian and other such games are looking elsewhere to vent their anger on hapless heads. Needless to say, Hercules is a Barbarian spin-off, though not quite as good.

Most people will be familiar with the twelve tasks of Hercules. Set by the King of Argos as penance for Hercules murdering his own children. Sadly, rather than cavorting round unknown worlds battling lions, overcoming Amazon women and retrieving girdles, you, as Hercules, get to battle skeleton rejects from the adventures of his old mucker Jason (of Argonauts fame).

The aggressive moves have some groovy sounding names such as Punch Of Death and Zeus' Torment, sadly they are nothing special, the Punch Of Death is a feeble little cross punch and Zeus' Torment, is a club in the family jewels.

An original if hindering idea, is the serpent that wriggles along the bottom of the screen. You can only injure your opponent is he is standing over this, so it takes some fancy jigging before you can even think about winning the fight, though the serpent does elongate as your energy goes down giving you a slightly larger advantage. There is one move that can affect the skeletons without them having to be standing in the right place and that is the Mountain Shaker, a ruddy hard clobbering to the cranium to you and me. This knocks the head off the skeleton who then twitches and falls over.

At the top and bottom of the screen are icons representing the tasks of Hercules. When one of them starts to flash you had better get ready because then it falls from the heavens and bobs up and down for a short period of time. With the speed of a wounded elephant and the grace of a concrete block, you have to run to the icon and whack it one to collect it. It is then transported into your almost safety deposit urn while you continue to battle away until the next icon turns up. Sometimes a little black spider will try to wend his way into your urn to grab one of your tasks. A bit of logic is required here - yup, splat the mutha.

With the tasks complete and the skeletons vanquished all that remains is a duel to the death with the Minotaur. The large, blue-horned, well-armed final beasty of the game. Beat him and give yourself a pat on the back, or whatever demi-gods do.

The lack of real variety is what afflicts Hercules. The moves are basically OK, but some make Hercules look more than a smite misproportioned. Fighting the skeletons is the same routine every time and it is just plain perseverance rather than skill required in completing the game. The spot effects in the combat are fine, though not even close to the beat-'em-up standards of IK.

A fairly good crack at a game. With better planning, actually being able to participate in the tasks, perhaps, and this would have been very good indeed.