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Arcade game conversions have always been big business, but the majority are seriously flawed. Some software houses seem incapable of creating a decent game based on an arcade original, but Ocean usually do a good ob and Sly Spy is no exception.

This is a horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up/kick-'em-up across ten levels. The idea is to get to the headquarters of the Council for World Domination Terrorists (winners of the Longest Bad Guys Name of the Year Award) and thwart them by any and every means at your disposal. In short, kill everything in sight.

The first level sees our interpid agent leaping out of a plane and free-falling to earth. Numerous bad guys appear and you shoot them. The next level involves entering a building and shooting some more bad guys. Then you shoot even more bad guys as the big bad boss tries to escape in a big black sedan.

At this point your sly spy hops onto a motorbike and deals with legions of enemy operatives who are either on motorbikes or hovering in the air with jetpacks. The big black sedan comes into sight and is swiftly dealt with.

The enemy boss lets slip where their HQ is and you scoot off to the harbour. This provides the backdrop to lots of jumping around and shooting on boats, and (stop me if you've heard this one before) lots more bad guys to annihilate.

At this point the action transfers underwater. Enemy agents appear in wetsuits and you harpoon them. Sharks also arrive on the scene and meet a similar fate. The next level is set in a warehouse where (get ready for one of those giant imaginative leaps) tigers are roaming around. So it's time to please the animal conservationists and blow away half the world's tiger population.

Level seven is set in a weapons storage cave where a large guy with a lethal hat, a la Goldfinger, tries to separate your sly spy head from your sly spy body with some nifty frisbee action. Duck sucka!

It's then time to don the wetsuit again for an assault on the enemy's HQ. After dealing with an enemy operative in a deep sea diving suit it's upstairs for more bad guys and more of those displaced tigers. Complete that and it's finally time to confront and terminate (oh spare us all this excessive originality) Mr. Big!

Software Creations have done an excellent job converting this game from the arcade original. Unfortunately this just isn't enough. The arcade game had poor animation and so has this. When you kick in the air there are just two sprites, one for leg down and one for leg up. It's the same story with the sweeping low kick.

The end-of-level bad guys are animated true to the arcade, which means two or three sprite movements, but the backdrops they perform against aren't innovative or interesting.

Enemy agents monotonously arrive stage left and right, occasionally lob a grenade at you, and get monotonously blown away by your lethal weaponry.

Moving around the screens is the same on each of the terrestrial levels and involves little more than clambering over boxes, jumping gaps and climbing ladders.

Sound is pretty much what we've come to expect from conversions. Nothing awe-inspiring, but it does the job.

Sly Spy doesn't set any records for originality and doesn't set the world alight with its animation. It's a competent conversion and that's its biggest failing. Ocean aren't doing themselves any favours faithfully replicating the original. If the licences are so restrictive, perhaps they should spend money on original games instead.

If you have a Bond fetish, miss those "all because the lady loves..." adverts and require some serious shooting practice then Sly Spy is just the game you're looking for. Only gamesters who dislike strategy and have itchy trigger fingers are going to run and run with this one.