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Could it be that Pirates are going to replace Ninjas as the new heroes of the computer game? Will we see staffs, shuriken and black pyjamas replaced by swords, parrots and wooden legs? Not if Pirates Of The Barbary Coast is anything to go by.

"Action", adventure and derring-do on the high seas but Cascade's game is not all it's cracked up to be. Despite the very nice packaging and graphics, Pirates Of The Barbary Coast is badly let down by slow and uninteresting gameplay.

The plot is full of the kind of clichés you'd expect. Whilst docked in Casablanca, your ship, The American Star, (the plot owes more to 20th Century Fox than 18th Century history) is attacked by 'Bloodthroat'.

Bloodthroat, in case you hadn't guessed, is the bloodthirsty pirate villain of the piece. He has captured your daughter, Katherine, and is holding her to ransom for 50,000 pieces of gold (seems rather a lot).

According to the map there are seven ports on the Barbary coast and you have to plod from one to the other in search of the poor unfortunate girl. You start out with 5,000 pieces of gold, some crew, enough food to keep them scurvy-free for a few days and a few odd supplies such as tobacco, wool and the like which you can trade.

Other useful odds and ends can be found lying around the ship. Fifteen cannons and balls-a-plenty to fill them with for example. So the idea is that you sail from port to port selling a bit of this, buying a bit of that, until you've got the necessary 50,000 to buy your beloved daughter's freedom (assuming she's not perfectly happy where she is, that is).

Alternatively you can load the old bucket with enough firepower to give a fleet of nuclear submarines a good run for its money and try and talk Bloodthroat out of it that way.

Whilst in port you are approached by a trader who asks you if you want to do a little business. This trader has a different name in every port from Tangier to Tripoli, but looks remarkably identical wherever you are. You can haggle over the price of goods, but if you push it too far he gets a bit shirty and refuses to trade. You can then try out the local store where, amongst other hings, you can buy information. The news comes pretty expensive in these parts and its price doesn't always reflect its value. I paid well over the odds to discover that you get a cheap cup of tea in Tripoli.

In search of something more exciting I set sail. Fair enough, it was more exciting than being in port, but it wasn't exactly where's the toilet paper time. After staring at the waves for ten minutes I arrived at the next port.

I tried again. Better luck this time, I was attacked. Before you can fight back you must load the cannon. Using a pointer you point to the cannon you want to load and press fire. Then you point to the ball, cannon, brush, cannon and that's it! Provided you got them in the right order. If not, it's here we go again.

This is supposed to be dead realistic, but having done it fifteen times I can tell you it's a pain in the bot. If you manage to get the cannons loaded you can set the elevation and fire at ship that crosses the horizon from left to right and fires at you. And if you hit it often enough you can board it and nick the booty or get more useful into from Captain Slog.

It doesn't actually sound too bad, does it? But there's one final factor that decided me against. Every time you decide to do something, like set sail, talk to the trader or go to the store; the old 1541 crawls into action, which, as we all know, means you might as well go and play half a dozen games of Monopoly while you're waiting.

The sound is pretty mediocre as well. There's no sea as far as I could make out and incoming cannonballs let out a feeble whistle.

Pirates Of The Barbary Coast isn't dreadful, it's just rather, well, dull. Unless you're overly anxious to be on the high seas I'd turn to the MicroProse Pirates review to see if it's any better.