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To be fair, there's not much that can be done to a sideways scrolling ninja-'em-up to make it that much different to the 300 billion other sideways scrolling ninja-'em-ups around. Apart, of course, from giving the main character a pet dog and calling the game Shadow Dancer - it's a wonder no-one thought of it before, really. US Gold certainly thought it was a splendid idea - especially as some coin-op person seemed to have done all the hard work already, meaning they merely had to nip down to Weston-Super-Mare, have a quick go on the arcade game, and then go home and write a conversion.

So how's it worked? Well, it has to be said, the look and feel of the original has come through perfectly. Which is all very well if you ignore the fact that there wasn't all that much look and feel in the first place - if you were to take a close look at the original, and more worryingly this computer version, you'd soon realise just how thin the gameplay really is. It's all sprites and background and not very much to do at all.

In fact, I can just about describe the gameplay in one sentence: you have to walk along some scrolling landscapes killing baddies with (unlimited) shurikens and your sword. The unusual bit is that you've got this pet dog who follows you about and at appropriate moments leaps on unsuspecting baddies and either kills them or holds them down. Very useful he is too - at least until he gets beaten up just that little bit too much, at which point he goes off and whimpers in a corner. And that's just about it in the 'unusual bits' category, I'm afraid.

As for the 'but is it any good?' part, well, I'm a bit unsure about what to say really. There's certainly a lot of it - four settings (airports and the like) and fifteen stages, including some bonus rounds (there's a great one where you have to shoot ninjas jumping off a building), end of level nasties and an assortment of different baddies. It's only when gameplay is mentioned that the word 'samey' seems to spring to mind, shout 'samey' and dance around the room singing 'samey, samey, samey'.

There are hardly any moves you can make (then again Shadow Warriors had piles and was still rubbish), the only extra weapons are two types of shurikens and, although it's fun for a quite a while, long term interest seems rather unlikely.

Certainly not the scrolling beat-'em-up to beat all beat-'em-ups, and, to be honest, not likely to make much of a mark at all.

An excellent conversion of a rather boring arcade game. A lot better than some beat-'em-ups perhaps, but still not really too much cop.