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When does promotion come with an exoskeletal armoured suit? When you work for E-SWAT - the Enhanced Special Weapons And Tactics crew, converted from their original coin-op role by US Gold. Well, they're looking for new recruits so our reviewer joined up to see what all the fuss was about...

You're a captain in the Liberty City police force. It's a steady job, but you're hot for promotion. Tired of your blue threads you hanker for the exoskeleton and souped-up armoury of the E-SWAT cyber police! Enhanced Special Weapons And Tactics: mean dudes with a licence to blow very large holes in anything criminal. But to make the grade, you gotta make arrests - the way forward is to catch those crims!

There are three mean dudes on the street who must be slapped behind bars in order for you to work your way through the ranks of the force. With each arrest comes promotion, from lowly Captain, to Assistant Chief, to Chief and finally earning the right to don the body armour and heavy artilery of the elite E-SWAT team.

Starting from police headquarters, your quest for commission horizontally scrolls its way left or right into the city and into danger. You and a buddy, if you so desire - walk and jump through the urban scenes, wiping out crime wherever it appears. And in a city as mean as this, that includes anyone from illegal skateboarders to gun-toting gangsters!

At then end of the scene you come across the target villains who have one or two tricks up their sleeve: prepare for a flame-throwing fatman, a skinny guy with a boomerang of doom, and a bloke who flings a ruddy great anchor, yo-yo fashion, into your midriff. Oucher.

Once this trio of lowiifes are safely in stir, you can climb into your exoskeleton and clank off on the game's real objective. The next twelve levels follow your efforts to track down and defeat an evil gangland mastermind, who has secreted himsef in an underground complex. (Why is it always an underground complex?)

As you progress through the city, the boss's equally vile cronies do their level best to stop you. Gangs of machine-gunning terrorists, marauding Big Foot-type trucks, razor-clawed tigers and barrel-lobbing gorillas all conspire towards your imminent downall. The head honcho has even lashed out on some shiny new E-SWAT-style exoskeleton suits for his underlings. These guys pose slightly more of a problem, but are still no match for the City's finest.

Ammo can be replenished by collecting icons, otherwise your E-SWATter resorts to kicking the baddies; not the most effective way of enforcing the law, I'm sure you'll agree. As well as toting a heavy-duty cannon, you can also collect a variety of super weapons. Jump up to touch the icons which appear and then hold the fire button down to unleash a barrage of serious hurt!

As you near the inner sanctum of the sadist supremo, things start to get quite hairy. His complex is guarded by automated defences such as armed robot trucks, hovering laser bikes, 'wrong-way' conveyor belts and lots of extremely vicious laser turrets. Up until now, the game is fairly straightforward, but from here on in you have to be quick on the stick, and even quicker on the fire button!

Regular arcade-goers will recognise this Sega coin-op conversion, and while it's a fair representation of E-SWAT - all fifteen levels - that's about it The backdrops are nicely drawn, with the occasional bit of parallax, but there are no real frills, bells or whistles. The sprites are chunky, the end-of-level guardians are only bite-sized and the sound effects are. nothing special.

But for all its averageness, the gameplay is still quite addictive - especially so in the two-player co-operation mode. The fun factor stands more chance of going off the scale if one of your mates is contributing to the death and destruction. Controls are nice and responsive and the action has just enough variety to keep you on your toes. Certainly later levels get very tricky indeed. Yep, this should keep you E-SWATting away for ages.

1. Takes a while to get going.
2. Guardians nowhere as impressive as their arcade counterparts.
3. Blocky sprites, poorly animated.
4. Poor sound effects.

1. All fifteen levels of the coin-op have been squeezed in, making the mission a long one.
2. Two-player gameplay boosts entertainment factor.
3. Inclusion of collectables and power-ups helps to sustain the interest.
4. Graded difficulty helps you to get started and then keeps you battling away.
5. Backdrops are nicely scrolled, well detailed, very smart indeed on later stages.