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The Way Of The Tiger was first released by Gremlin for the C64 last year. I must admit to having a slight bias towards Gremlin for the simple reason that everything they do on the C16 lately is completely brilliant, well, most of it anyhow.

TWOT is no exception. It has the best graphics and combat of any of the martial arts games for the C16. Come to that, it's better than a few I've seen on the C64. For a straight conversion it's extremely well done and the game is remarkably faithful to its C64 counterpart.

For those of you who like the background detail, the story is set in the magical world of Orb. The blurb goes on a bit about People of Mamarch, mystical islands of tranquil dreams, golden shores and emerald rice meadows. What a road of cobbrers as the great comic genius of our time, Benny Hill would put it.

Stripped of the purple pagodas and emerald paddy fields, the script goes something like that. When you were knee-high to a glasshopper, you were dumped on the steps of the local temple by your (loyal?) servant who wasn't too sure where the hospital was. Incidentally, the servant was old and dying of a hideous curse. Serves her right if you ask me.

The monks who lived in this temple, being a fairly OK bunch of guys, took you in and fed you on Farley's rusks for a few years. In no time at all, you become an acolyte, which contrary to popular belief is not the stuff you put in car batteries, but a sort of glorified altar boy.

Now, because of this funny birthmark you have, the monks think you have some special significance, i.e. that you wouldn't half be good at murdering people with your bare hands, or if it came to it, a large piece of wood, or even a sword. So they set to work at training you to become a ninja.

With the preliminary training out of the way, there is only one obstacle to be overcome before attaining your full Ninja licence. Well, there are three actually. Naijishi (that's the head bloke) has set you three tests in which you must overcome some formidable adversaries.

The three tests consist of unarmed combat, pole fighting and samurai sword fighting. Each section loads from tape or disk once you've completed the previous one. Or at least it should do. My copy proved to be a little temperamental in this respect.

Unarmed combat is carried out in much the same way as in other martial arts games. You can attempt one of the fourteen moves by pushing the joystick in various positions either with or without the fire button depressed. For some reason, there are no moves associated with the seven o'clock position, so you don't get the full sixteen. That's not the case with pole and sword fighting where you get fifteen and sixteen respectively.

Animation is pretty smooth, even if your man does look like a cross between a mummy and a soldier in full chemical warfare get-up. The backdrop for unarmed combat is pretty impressive. Clouds pass over the mountains in the far distance, while in the foreground there is a smattering of vegetation.

As far as the combat itself goes, let's be honest. The basic idea is to beat the living daylights out of the other guy before he does it to you. There are two ways of doing that. Either you kick him in the head until his eyes drop out, or you can go for the aesthetic approach and try out some fancy tricks.

You can do it either way but it's more fun the second. And for once the opponents are good enough to make a fight of it. They're not brilliant and you can get away with clubbing some of them to death, but there are the more skillful ones.

I expected pole fighting and Samurai sword fighting to be unarmed combat with a stick in your hand, but there are significant differences. For one thing the backdrops are all different. Pole fighting has to be the best. The two of you fight it out on a log bridge over a river and the loser ends up in the drink. One big difference with the final two screens is that they are just that - single screens. When your reach the edge there is nowhere left to run, whereas unarmed combat gives you a scrolling panorama.

Of all the "beat-'em-ups" on the C16 the major criticism has been that the quality of combat has left a lot to be desired. You'll all remember my disappointment in Way Of The Exploding Fist. The scenery was brilliant, the animation was brilliant but the competition was so weak you could have knocked them over with bad breath. In that respect alone Way Of The Tiger comes out on top because, however good you are, you will eventually meet your match with one or other of the Ninja bashers.

The combination of Gremlin's skill and attention to detail in other aspects of the game makes it a clear winner.