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The beat-'em-up isn't a genre that's particularly well served by the Amiga so far, and a game which combines that with an arcade adventure format Last Ninja-style is non-existent. Or was non-existent until French software house Silmarils waded in with this entertaining slice of violence.

You play Inspector Harry, a (white) policeman fighting the war against drugs on the mean streets of Manhattan.

Harry roams the streets of Harlem, the Bronx, and Chinatown and is variously molested by punks, bikers, chainsaw-wielding nutters, blacks with baseball bats, ninjas, and crack-crazed whores. Most of these are loaded up to the eyeballs with dope which Harry can confiscate when he's laid them out.

The most striking feature about Manhattan Dealers is its graphics. They're exquisitely well drawn, and the backdrops look strikingly realistic. Odd little touches are really pleasing like the way people lob bricks and even plant pots out the windows at poor old Harry as he goes about his business.

It is there very touches though that reveal Manhattan Dealers' weaknesses. It could have been so much better. Once you've visited the ten locations you've just about exhausted the game in terms of exploration. This is particularly annoying because each one takes a separate load to appear. The mission, too, vary little with Harry enmeshed in an interminable round of thrashings in which the assailants have to be knocked down more and more times. It all becomes a bit tedious, and the arcade adventure element is lost in the continual cycle of fights.

Sound too could have been better with some more solid thwacks, and maybe even a sampled chainsaw noise.

What you're feeling after playing Manhattan Dealers is that the game could have been so much better if they'd bothered to extend it, and taken a little more time. Those streets should have been a lot meaner.