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Tiger Road is a martial arts beat-'em-up at its crudest. None of this messing around with between 16 and 255 different moves, just make sure your man is pointing in the right direction and whammo!

The nearest Tiger Road gets to exhaustive documentation is the short scene-setter on the back of the pack. You, as Lee Wong, set out on a quest to free a bunch of kidnapped kiddies, held by the completely insane, not to mention fairly evil, Ryu Ken Oh. Ken fancies himself as a bit of an oriental Pied Piper and wants to turn the brats into soldiers to fight in his evil army. Only you can stop him of course and to do that you must battle with countless awesome opponents from sword-swiping Samurai to tortoises - well, they looked like tortoises to me.

Lee Wong sets out on the road to death and destruction with nothing more than a three foot club spiked with six inch nails to protect him from Ken Oh's evil minions. The club actually works pretty well, particularly for ground-based attackers like Samurai and tortoises. There are a lot of birds in this game - they fly around your head and sap your life-giving force which is a bit of a pain. The only way to get them is to leap in the air and take a swipe mid-flight.

When you get a break from belting bad guys the idea is to make a run for the edge of the screen and get the scrolling going, if only for a change of scenery. You have a generous sixty seconds to get to the end of the section before you forfeit a life. If you make it in one piece it's off with the old screen and on with the new.

The new screen will have a new backdrop, new layouts and some new monstrous beings in addition to the birds, Samurai and tortoises which have walk-on parts in every section by the looks of things. The scenery isn't the most imaginative that I've ever seen, occasionally you get to jump on a table. One of the better screens has you jumping around on platforms taking a swipe at a flying ghost-like Samurai.

What else? Oh yes, every now and then when you club an unfortunate creature to death it leaves behind its own weapon which you can then pick up and use. It's a shame that the only change this makes to your performance is a cosmetic one. Whilst you might look a much cooler customer swinging a Samurai sword than a caveman club, it has an identical effect as far as your enemies are concerned.

It's not what you'd call sophisticated, but it's a good crack all the same. I mean, be honest, what actually happens when you get one of those games with a book of instructions like 'pull the joystick to 45 degrees with the fire button pressed and your spare finger in the cartridge port to execute a 360 degree high split kick with Immelmann loop. Do you memorise it from beginning to end? Nope. Absolutely no thinking involved just give 'em a good kicking, or nailing or whatever comes to hand.