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He's a dancer in the realm of the shadow, oh yeah, and he's a rock hard Ninja too. Well, that's not strictly true because this Ninja feels the need to take a canine companion along with him on his forays into the unknown. Shadow Dancer is the game and slicing up bad guys is the game.

If you haven't guessed by now, Shadow Dancer is a classic slice-'em-up with a sprinkling of the Orient - it's a sort of Cook-in-the-Sauce stir-fry really. Through a course of fifteen levels, you control your Ninja hard man Joe Masushi and his ever-faithful mutt in a daring mission to defeat an evil gang.

You control him using the joystick: push the stick to the left and Joe shuffles stealthily to the left, push the stick to the right and he shuffles stealthily to the right. Push up on the joystick and he jumps stealthily into the air as if someone has just pinched its bum.

In keeping with the World Ninja Armoury Control Regulations, your chap has standard shurikens and a plain vanilla sword at his disposal. There are also the obligatory power-ups along the way which turn the shurikens into eyebrow frazzling balls of flame. Your best weapon however is your faithful hound.

If a particular bad guys is more than your Ninja skills can handle then press the Fire button and pull down on the joystick for a couple of seconds. When you let go of the Fire button, pooch leaps across the screen and gives the nearest baddie a right royal chomp in the rear. This gives you the opportunity to leisurely stroll up and shoot the otherwise occupied chap. You have to be pretty quick though - leave him too long and your doggy is soon his normal self again.

As crooner Val Doonican might not say: nice sprites, shame about the detection routines. The main Ninja charater is a very big, well-defined sprite who has a large repertoire of moves. Even so, this man and his dog do the most amazing balancing feats on the edge of platforms. What's more, the baddies react in predictable ways - they sometimes turn into human beach balls and bounce you off the screen, for instance.

The graphics of the shock-ridden city are well designed and true to the arcade game. One particularly good section is the "Statue of Liberty scene". Sound isn't bad either. Samples are used when your dog barks and when one of Joe's deadly shurikens hits its target. They make a nice change from warbly chip music.

With Shadow Dancer you've seen it all before. If you're fired of your other platform beat-'em-ups and if wandering around old ruined cities, bumping off menacing bad guys is your cup of instant tea, then give it a whirl. At least US Gold are trying - they've added samples and enlarged the sprites, so you can see what you're doing.

It's hackneyed, cliched, gaudy, predictable, banal and stereotypical, but if you like the platform hack-n-slash genre then Shadow Dancer is undoubtedly the best of a mediocre crop.