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Long ago, when the word Ninja meant something other than a scooter, a chap called Lee Wong had a problem. Not a problem that was brought on by the mere whiff of house dust, but a real difficulty.

Some evil cuss had been kidnapping the local children, and Lee Wong was having none of it.

The aforementioned varmint was called Ryu Ken Oh, and had got the name by being the least interesting evildoer around. People just weren't interested in him. When they heard the name, they said, "Ryu Ken? Oh". Old RK0 was determined to be taken seriously, and set about building himself an army.

But no self-respecting mercenary would even consider working for him, so he kidnapped children and brainwashed them. RKO lives at the end of Tiger Road, in the big fortress just past the school. So along the road trudges our hero lee Wong, followed closely by his large and trusty axe.

No sooner has he started than he is attacked by a troupe of Stunt Ninjas that the scooters). In true Water Margin fashion there was one troupe of Stunt Ninjas less when The Man, Lee Wong, had passed. Inside the fortress The Man is confronted by some rather slow giants who stand about until you hit them enough and then disappear for no adequately explained reason.

Dotted about are various goodies that can give you a sword or a mace, which are handy, or an axe, which is not. You have to attack these things to get at them, This sort of thing can be annoying in mid fight.

Once you have found your way past the slow giants, it's a mad dash along a corridor while trying to avoid large rolling brown things. I guess these are meant to be logs, but they look more like unformatted chocolate biscuits to me.

Being hit by a biscuit causes you to leap back and lose some strength.

Your axe (or sword or mace) can make short work of them - it's all a matter of timing.

Now comes the standard fight with the hairy barbarian bit. The one in this game is a real nasty. He has a sneaky trick of climbing the walls to drop on you from above.

The rinky-tinky Probe tunesmith has been at work here, but the usually neat graphics aren't. They move speedily and smoothly enough, but not very prettily.

Anything purporting to be martial arts-ish should have appalling dubbing. This game just doesn't cut it by having very reasonable sound indeed. The game drops into a kind of routine after a while, and several levels are just variations on themes.

That is not to say they are not fun - wasting various types of oriental warriors is always good for a lark.

It's just a pity there are no hanggliding Ninjas, as portrayed on the cover.

Tiger Road could be classed as dab, which is not as big as brill or halibut, but it still retains most of the charms of its bigger brothers.