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Ladies and gentlemen, we proudly present the very first review - the worldwide exclusive - of US Gold's biggest licence of '89. You've seen the poster, and four of you even saw the film. The programming team behind Moonwalker are Irish-based Emerald, whose previous projects include Vigilante and The Deep - which hardly bodes well. Have they come up with the goods this time?

Leather is back with a vengeance, as that permanent germ-free off the wall adolescent Michael Jackson roams four levels squashing bad guys and generally making a better and cleaner world for the children everywhere. The film was a baaad (as in "terrible") excuse for stringing together one video track after another, so coming up with some kind of valid plot for a computer game was always going to be difficult.

The first level provides an overhead view of the pale one as he careers around the studios, avoiding being mobbed to death by his crazed fans. The second is in a similar vein, except that by collecting lucky orbs you can become various vehicles (whacko, huh?) which enable you to access special areas of the map.

The third and fourth levels switch to a horizontally-scrolling scenario where His Royal Oddness can really let rip with sub-machine guns and lasers. Here, the purpose is to blast away the Stormtroopers with all the fire power you can muster.

Michael is controlled with the joystick: in the first two levels he walks until you hold down on the fire button, then he breaks into a run. Running comes in handy, especially when you need to dodge all those pesky fans, but being an ethereal kind of a chap you can't keep up the running for long. There are places scattered around the map where the fans never go and you can stop for a rest but these aren't highlighted - it's a matter of guesswork.

If you do get caught by your fans (ow!) you part with one of your Platinum Disks. MJ would probably feel more like walloping the crazed youngesters, but one of the restrictions imposed on the game by The Man Himself was that he shouldn't be too macho.

In level one the idea is to find the various pieces of the rabbit suit (what is this guy on?). With each piece you collect, the graphic of MJ down one side of the playing area is gradually dressed in the suit.

To find the six sections you need to move across the entire map, but once you've worked out where they all are, they'll always be in the same place each time so it's not going to be a problem getting past this section again.

Level two sees MJ collecting green orbs which first change him into a car and then into a boat. Collecting the orbs is a strategic task, because the moment you change into the car you have only a short time in which to leap over the bridge. Mess this up and all the orbs are taken away from you and scattered back across the level - which means you have to return and start searching for them all over again.

The objective here is to find that elusive drug-dealer, who's rather unimaginatively called Mr Big. Although you never actually get to meet him, you're able to counter the worldwide threat of narcotics by running over the packets of gruds he leaves behind with your motorbike.

It's on this level that you encounter your first Stormtrooper: squash him with your bike, too, because if you don't get him he'll get you for sure. Since you're on a bike there's no need to worry about two speeds - the bike travels fast all the time, making it much easier to mow down Stormtroopers and escape those wretched fans.

The third level, where the action switches to a horizontally-scrolling Club 30s, is the most visually impressive scene - excluding the detailed introduction sequences. Here you can go in for some serious blasting, because the objective is to wipe out all the Stormtroopers hiding upstairs. Your first duty is to pick up the gun and go searching for a magazine cartridge so that you have the ammo to fight back. These cartridges don't last for long, however, so it's important to find others quickly. When you've got the gun, moving around causes the gun sights to shift across the screen. Whenever the Stormtroopers appear on the balcony you must blast them before they can blast you.

Without giving away the plot behind the final level, I can say that it's another horizontally-scrolling section in which MJ, attacked by a giant laser gun, has to change into an automaton.

Animated intro sequences between each level are superb. They've all been digitised directly from video, so they're accurate in every detail. Sound on the ST version is unfortunately limited to the sound chip, so there's no sampled effects taken from the video.

Four-way scrolling in the first two levels is very fast, although the overhead view of MJ and his fans becomes annoying after a while. For one thing, it makes it difficult to distinguish enemies from fans.

It's not until you get to the third level that the graphics really take off. Suddenly you're greeted by a large sprite of MJ and some brilliantly detailed graphics that are a huge improvement on the previous levels.

Speedy animation is maintained throughout all the levels so that each one is addictive, challenging and, most important of all, very playable.

With car parks full of driving games due out for Christmas, finding any thing with a spark of originality is going to be difficult. Moonwalker has the distinction of being different from everything else on the market.

The overhead display is confusing at first, but once you get over this hurdle you have a great game. The first two levels would improve enormously if you could simply whip out a gun and blast all those fans to bits, especially since that's often exactly what you feel like doing. Instead, you have to try and dodge them, which is very annoying and occasionally impossible.

The first two levels of Moonwalker are decent enough, though the sprites - seen from overhead - are so small you sometimes wonder if this is a 16-bit game. In no way do they prepare you for the superb graphics in the third and fourth levels, which on their own would be worth the price of the game.

In any action game what matters most is how playable and addictive it is: will you be unable to tear yourself away from the screen even when it's way past midnight? In this respect Moonwalker certainly delivers the goods. Combine this with the massive variations between levels and you're always inspired to delve further and further into the game.