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Hmmm. We've seen this before, haven't we? You playing a contestant in a futuristic game show, that is. Killing Game Show ring any bells? The Running Man? Anyway, that's what's happening here.

It's like this - you enter an arena (or "room" as they call them in the trade) and are immediately followed by gangs of muscled gentlemen carrying large truncheons, who proceed to follow you around. Upon meeting you, they decide it might be a good idea to hit you repeatedly on the head until you fall down.

Now, the obviously isn't what you call fun, so you're armed with a gun which, er, shoots bullets, and seems to make the other men go away quite rapidly. The more men you kill, the higher your score is (and the longer you live, naturally). Along the way, you might like to pick up the pressies on the ground, which give you prizes like "a brand new VCR" or "a sleek 1990s roadster". And then there are the bonus weapons to collect. They give you triple fire, a rocket launcher, a big swirly thing that surrounds you, and other things you definitely want. They don't last long enough.

Eventually, when all the men, mutants, patrolling guards, tanks and so on have been dealt with, you can move onto the next room and indirectly, the next level - if you can find the exit to it. And if you can get past the end-of-level alien, of course.

Now, guess which aspect of the game disappoints the most? Yeess - the sound. Most of the time you get a lot of white noise which makes you want to retune your ST, but occasionally a bonus weapon pumps up the volume (as it were) and the sound almost becomes quite good. Graphically, we could have had worse, but then... well, the contestants walk in a campy skipping style, and most of the other effects are the standard sort of stuff you see in every other game. The campaign for decent sound effects continues.

Well, let's see. To be honest, it's not as good as Llamatron, its obvious competitor. The programming is done well enough, but the game doesn't have much edge to it - it's very difficult to become involved or caught up in the action, and there's very rarely an adrenalin surge to keep you going. Better sound would have helped here. If you're playing with two players, things get a little more frantic, but still not really enough.

If you've played the coin-op you know what a frantic noisy experience that is. Smash TV almost captures this on the ST, but can't quite bridge that gap between a competent conversion and a top-notch red-hot arcade game that calls you back time and time again. In other words, Smash TV misses the star prize but just about manages the cutlery set.

1. Can run on single sided disks
2. Llamatron doesn't look as good, but it plays a wicked game and its samples make it the victor.
3. The setting is straight out of The Killing Game Show, but that game takes the idea of a game show further.