Meeting strange and wonderful people from other lands and knocking seven shades of stuffing out of them has become a very popular pastime, and joining the band of beat-em-ups, such as Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat is this bout of carnage, Dangerous Streets.

It uses almost exactly the same formula s the other games - you pick one of the eight fighters and opt for either a straight one-on-one with an Amiga or human-controlled opponent, or go for the tournament, where you get to fight your way through the whole bunch of nutters.

The characters are a funny lot, including a lorry driver, a palmist and a disc jockey. Each has a range of special moves, some of which are distinctly weird and include turning into a moat monster or whipping people with your hair.

Control is by joystick and exactly which move you perform depends on the distance you are from your target. Once you have sussed the special moves they are easy to execute.

Each fight has a time limit, and the least damaged body by the end of it wins. There are two cameos of the contestants at the bottom of the screen, which gradually get more battered as your character does. Unfortunately, there is little indication of a successful hit, and no staggering characters let you know you have dished out a good pasting.

The characters are colourful, the sprites are a decent size and they have a cartoony look, although they do seem a little amateurish. There are a good few fighting moves but not many frames of animation, making the moves very jerky.

The backgrounds are lush with some snappy parallax scrolling and loads of colours, but the sound effects are a bit wimpy, so it is a better idea to go for the music option.

The action is certainly fast, there are three speed settings and on the quickest one the characters leap about like demented souls. To get a good hit you need to be at the right distance for the attack, so you tend to spend a lot of time flailing around trying to get the impact point of a blow over the opponent's head.

Dangerous Streets has a few exasperating features, such as the controls for the fighters being different - push up on the joystick and one character will jump and another will kick. You can also move completely off the screen which is a bit poor, but the special moves are imaginative, and the whole game has a light-hearted feel to it. There is none of the gritty reality of punching people in the kidneys here.

The truth of the matter is that Dangerous Streets won't keep beat-em-up fans happy as long as they have got games like Body Blows Galactic and Mortal Kombat. It is wacky and weird but ultimately fails to really grab the imagination.

Digi-Keile ist derzeit ja groß in Mode, und tatsächlich macht dieses Game zunächst auch einen höchst modischen Eindruck.

Riesige Sprites turnen behende über megabunte Parallax-Szenarien, es gibt beeindruckendes 3D-Scrolling wie beim "Streetfighter II"-Automaten, und der Schlagabtausch wird von knackigen Sound-FX und passender Begleitmusik untermalt.

Freuen darf man sich außerdem über mehrere Fightmodi (Tournament, Solo, zwei Spieler), ein regulierbares Spieltempo und das umfassende Kämpfersortiment mit immerhin acht frei anwählbaren Recken.

Weniger erfreulich ist schon, daß die nicht gerade originellen Downtown-Prügler gerade mal zwei bis drei Tritte plus einige Special-Moves beherrschen und höchst unfreulich ist die Tatsache, daß die lahme und undurchschaubare Steuerung gekonnte Manöver gekonnt zu verhindern weiß.

Sein Erfolgserlebnis bekommt man freilich trotzdem, denn obwohl man hier das Joypad herzlich ziellos bearbeitet, fallen die dämlichen Computergegner selbst im höchsten Schwierigkeitsgrad gleich reihenweise um!

Mehr Spaß als der Kamp gegen diese Nieten verspricht allenfalls die Auseinandersetzung Mann gegen Mann, zumal kein einziger richtiger Endgegner die gefährlichen Straßen unsicher macht.

Wenn man jetzt noch weiß, daß die Scoreliste nur am Monitor, nicht aber am Fernseher mit seinem meist kleineren Bildausschnitt zu erkennen ist, dann weiß man auch, daß man als Prügelfan mit CD32 besser auf die angekündigte Umsetzung von "Body Blows Galactic" wartet. (rl)

Will you do something for me, chums? If you get this game in your CD32 bundle, or if you somehow come by a copy in some other way (God forbid that you should actually go out and deliberately buy it), will you do me a favour? Will you IMMEDIATELY take the CD out of its case, make five or six big scratches on the surface with a nail or a Stanley knife, then take a hammer and smash it into lots of little pieces (it will break easier if you have scratched it, you see), then flush them down the toilet. Or preferably, burn them to little twisted melted lumps, then flush them down the toilet.

Whatever you do, DO NOT be tempted to play it first. Not even once. Because if you do, I will tell you what will happen.

SPLIT SIDES
First, you will laugh so hard that your brain will be starved of oxygen and you will lapse into a coma, but that is alright because medical technology is very advanced these days and they will probably be able to revive you without too much trouble.

After that, though, you will stick the game in the bottom of your game drawer (NO! BURN IT! BURN IT AND SMASH IT! DESTROY IT! NOW!) and forget about it. Then, one night weeks or months into the future, you will be out with some of your mates, maybe down the pub or at a party or something. You will get a bit drunk. You will bring a couple of your chums back to your house for a cup of coffee or a last couple of lagers or whatever.

Suddenly, in your alcohol-addled state, you will have a great idea. "Hey, I have got this really funny game," you will slur. "Get a load of this!". You will load up Dangerous Streets. You will start to play it, as you all giggle in that pathetic, hysterical way. After a minute or two it will dawn on you that no-one else is laughing anymore. Your friends, suddenly sober, will be gaping at your new state-of-the-art games machine with barely-concealed disgust. All at once they will remember that they have to be up early for work/college/school/washing their hair in the morning, making their excuses and hurriedly leave. They will never speak to you again. They will tell everybody they know. You will be shunned by society, lose your job, and probably your home. You will become a sad, lonely alcoholic. Finally, wasted and withered and unloved, you will die in a cold gutter, of shame. Do not let it happen to you. Just Say No.

I know what you are thinking. You think I am exaggerating, don't you? I am not. This game - and I am not joking - could single-handedly destroy the credibility of the CD32, beyond repair. It is the lead game in the bundle that most people will get their machine in (it is actually called the 'Dangerous Streets Pack' for God's sake), and hence probably the first one they will play. If they then tackle Oscar and the actually quite-good-ish-but-none-too-friendly Diggers, they will probably take the machine straight back to the shop there and then demand an SF2-pack SNES and two hundred quid back.

You are not going to believe how dreadful this is, but I am going to explain it to you.

CRUCIFIED
The first thing that happens when you load up Dangerous Streets is that it gives you some instructions to read through. The first of these instructions tell you how to load the game. Jesus. The rest of the instructions reprise the ones printed in the manual, which is to say they give you not even the most elementary idea whatsoever of how to actually play the game. Which button punches? Which button kicks? Why does the blue button have the same effect as pressing 'down' on the pad, but only half of the time?

These, and any other questions you might have about the control of the game, remain unanswered. Then you start playing the game and you realise why. You don't need them.

GO ON - HIT ME
Pick a character, any character. Walk up to the computer opponent and press the punch button (hit them all, and you will discover that the yellow one is the one which actually appears to launch any kind of useful attacking move). You will score a hit, probably.

It is important that you try not to be distracted at this point by the spectacular dismal animation or the eye-wateringly poor backgrounds, as they will only make you lose concentration and forget which button the 'punch' one was again. Also, do not go wandering around the room looking for the badly-tuned crackly radio which appears to be broadcasting the sound of someone with really bad laryngitis hacking up a throatful of watery phlegm into a broken microphone from underneath some thick blankets. That is the game sound that is. (And simply try to ignore the dire 1970s Euro-pop background music).

Fix your attention firmly on the screen, and continue to hit the yellow button. Although there is no visible or audible difference between successful and unsuccessful hits, eventually your opponent will buckle and fall to the floor, seemingly arbitrarily. You have won a round. Repeat the process once more and you will have won a bout. Repeat the process again, but this time against a different character (there are eight, and you have to fight them all, including a bout against yourself, as is traditional. Although it is not quite as traditional for your clone to be dressed in exactly the same colours as you and hence completely indistinguishable, but hey, let us not be nit-picky).

Try to retain your suspension of disbelief as one of your computer opponents suddenly changes into a solid rectangular block of steel as a defence, or inflicts their 'hair Gel Attack' on you. Take a moment out to wipe the tears of mirth/disbelief/embarrassment from your eyes, in case you impair your vision in later years. Decide that now would be a good time to stop playing before you do yourself an injury of some sort, or have an accident in your trousers.
Go round to Flair's office. Laugh hysterically until they call the police.