Rolling Ronny is a bright and cartoony scrolling platformer, with tons of things to collect, lots of mini games bunged in for your amusement, and a smattering of 'look before you leap' sub-plots for added depth. Quite clearly these elements are supposed to gel together and form a lighthearted romp in the style of, say, The Blues Brothers or The Simpsons. Let's see if they do...

To start with, there's no doubt that there's plenty to do in this game, Ronny not only has to skate along and collect floating boxes of jewellery on behalf of Scotland Yard, he also has to collect money with which to buy weapons, avoid sundry bad guys, and run errands for various characters within the game in order to amass ever larger sums of money (which proves essential for your progress).

The whole thing's a pretty enough affair (if slightly characterless in some hard-to-put-your-finger-on way), and comes with its fair share of suitably juvenile humorous touches, but while it's all busy and colourful enough on the surface, in truth it's not all that much fun. Scratch the surface of this overly-elaborate platformer and you're left with a basic game of stunning mediocrity.

The mark of a successful arcade game is that you feel compelled to play it 'just one more time' but ploughing through this is more chore than entertainment. Whenever I made progress (which really isn't all that difficult or challenging) it had a very 'So what?' feel to it - there simply weren't enough surprises around the corner to make it worthwhile carrying on.

You get the feeling that Virgin have lavished too many trinkets on Rolling Ronny in an attempt to make a plain game look more sophisticated than it really is, and I'm afraid it simply doesn't work. Not a terrible game, just an average one, but if you're looking for simple action-packed fun, there are plenty of other options available. Try Robocod, those Blues Brothers, or Mega Twins, or...

Hollow platformer with some neat twists, but not enough of them to make it all that much fun. Very very average.