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Pirates, evil wizards and ninjas together in one game? In one country? All at the same time? Oh well, all's fair in love and game coding, and ninjas are quite brill at fighting. Besides, it helps make the plot really 'interesting'.

The retro-active justification for Skull And Crossbones goes something like this. One Eye and Red Dog were lords of the sea, murderers and pillagers of the highest calibre. All was fine with their world until one fine evening when they were returning home with their ill-gotten gains. On this particular evening they bumped into an evil sorcerer, who took an instant dislike to them and hid all their treasures in dead awkward places.

So now they are doomed to search the town and its residents' ships until they find where the wizard's hidden their gold. Of course, nobody likes a pirate, so everybody Red Eye and One Dog meet draws their sword, whips out their ninja nunchukas or produces whatever other weapon that's appropriate to their social strata and challenges our heroes to a duel. It's a sort of neighbourhood watch scheme with attitude.

All our sea-faring heroes have to defend themselves with are small, but shiny, swash-bucklers' swords. They can thrust, lunge or backslash their opponent to a pile of dust. Or they can draw back and defend themselves from the enemies' parries.

Skull And Crossbones is a one- or two-player game. If you're playing on your own (and you probably will be) you take the part of One Eye who's clad in a clean white shirt. In two-player mode, your opponent plays Red Dog in a rather fetching purple shirt (that's Red Dog in the shirt - your mate can wear whatever he likes). And that's really about the only difference, as the two players take it in turns to play through each level.

Each level is played on a different scrolling map but you can only move on to the next section if you discover a red exit square; these appear when you've killed everything on that level - fine in principle but problematic in practice. You see, the game won't scroll back on itself. You can be forced along the map, leaving 'live' enemies behind. Which means you're stuck because the exit square won't appear until all your foes are dead!

Red One and Dog Eye can only either face left or right so their movements are very limited. And it's sometimes difficult to tell whether you're actually bashing your foe or not. The only way to know, is to play with the music off so you can hear the sound effects.

Controlling your pirate should be simple enough, with the commands swapping direction when One Red Dog or Dog Eye Red do an about face. The problem's getting them to turn around in the first place. You can't turn while you're being hit and even then turning takes time because you have to hold down the Fire button. This leaves you open to attack for a second - which is usually the second you die.

Although Skull And Crossbones looks okay in a garish sort of way - well actually it doesn't; I'm just searching for something good to say about the darned game. Basically, the graphics are colourful, but pretty rubbish and the appearance of the bonuses typify the laziness with which the program has been written; they're just 'O' from the standard C64 character set that pop into existence then bounce lamely off the screen. Skull And Crossbones also gets the wooden leg award for gameplay award.

Basically, it's a very poorly worked out game that's almost in danger of being fun to play until you stuck by the daft scrolling. The graphics and sound effects aren't in any danger of improving your enjoyment either. It's hard to imagine that anyone ever actually put coins into this when it was a coin-op. At least on computer, you pay once and you play once - that sounds like a fair deal. Sorry, I've started talking gibberish. S&C gets you that way.

Graphics 54%
The graphics are bright and functional at best, cheap-looking at worst.

Sound 48%
You have a choice of fairly bog standard music or sound effects.

Playability 68%
You might well enjoy your first stab at Skull And Crossbones...

Lastability 9%
But it's more than likely it'll be the last you play it as well.

Overall 37%