There's a price for justice, and the price is freedom! Judges are the law. We make the law, and we enforce the lawe. And the Chief Justice of Mega City One is Judge Dredd. A super-cop in post-apocalyptic America, he acts like Dirty Harry first thing Monday morning, packs enough firepower to shame the Terminator and makes Robocop look like a big girl's frilliest blouse. He's here, and he's going to punish the guilty.

Judge Dredd is a sideways view, scrolling platform shooting match. Working his way through the Dan Tanna Block, Charles Darwin Block, Aqua Station, Weather Station, City Def base and Dark Judges lair, Dredd must punish the 'perp's'. Lawgiver (pistol) in hand, he must first bust the Fatties, who've taken the DT tower. They are running amok, ransacking the entire place in a mad, feverish, munchies frenzy.

Kill the guilty
Dredd's mission is to sentence (kill) the guilty and protect the innocent, as wasting 'perp's' keeps the crime rate down. If it climbs too high then Dredd has to take the 'long walk' (resign). To stop the criminals regenerating he must destroy their source of power. For the Fatties this means wasting the food dispensers, four of which are scattered through the maze of ramps and runways.

Dredd walks, leaps and shoots, or rides his mutant Harley hog Law Master. While walking he can jump up in the air or shoot the obese offenders. To get around a bit faster he can summon his bike, hop on and then race to another area.

The six levels get progressively harder, as the enemies gain far greater powers, each 'block' ending in a head-to-head showdown with a gang's lead nasty.

Dredd'ed myths
Dredd is a designers dream. The chronicles of Mega City One have spawned entire mythos, full of graphic power underlined with dark wit, thanks to its comic base. Dredd the game however, looks distinctly average. Dredd is a small dull dull sprite, while his increasingly outrageous foes are pale imitations of their 2000 AD selves.

Controlling the 'Judge with a gnudge' is irksome. He walks slowly and has trouble negotiating slopes. Worse still, the Law Master is more of a moped/hairdryer than a high-horsepowered cycle and it won't appear when Dredd is stood on a slope. When it does turn up, Dredd can't even fire when he's in the saddle. The Law Giver lacks punch, it is supposed to be Judges' executioner, but Dredd would be pushed even to dish out a community service order!

The graphic menace of Dredd hasn't been captured, and the game-over sequence emphasises this. When dealing with a comic classic, blocky black-and-white cartoons will not do.

Dredd is crippled by an average games format. There is limited control over JD himself and somewhat run-of-the-mill graphics. The game is tough, as the crime rate rises incredible fast, but this does not inject tension.

Easily the most popular character to emerge from 2000AD, it's surprising that Dredd hasn't appeared in more computer games. With the ultraviolent Mega City 1 and its countless weird inhabitants, there is plenty of scope for a decent arcade/adventure or a scrolling shoot 'em up. The first attempt at releasing a Dredd-based game resulted in disaster and, sadly, the same fate is set to befall this substandard effort, too.

Dredd himself is instantly recognisable as he struts along the platform-filled screens that make up Mega City 1.
Wandering along these streets are numerous perps and civilians, and, depending on which level you are on, you must shoot the criminals to prevent the crime rate from rising too high. And if the level of crime reaches a predetermined level, then Dredd will be forced to hand over his treasured badge and the game will be over.

However, to aid you in your trek across the dangerous city, Dredd's bike can be summoned by a quick prod of the space bar, and for what you gain in speed you lose in weaponry as you cannot shoot any crooks that get in the way whilst on the bike.

The main problem with Judge Dredd is the repetitive gameplay. Wandering slowly up and down numerous platforms, with only the odd felon to pick off is extremely dull, and the crime indicator seems to have a mind on its own and doesn't follow any particular pattern. It's also hard to position Dredd so that he can walk up the inclining platforms, a problem which adds unnecessary frustration to an already dull game. Best avoided, even if you're a Dredd fan.

The game opens with you at the keyboard of Justice Central's mainframe. By being extremely clever and manipulative you can access classified information about yourself, your Lawgiver (gun) and your Lawmaster (bike). You can also have a quick go at the games judges play in their spare time (apparantely), namely Bomber (that old VIC-20 game where you try to flatten a whole city before you land) and Snakes (strange centipede collect 'em up).

If you can drag yourself away from these outstanding landmarks in computer entertainment, you might be able to leach a few details from the computer about the missions.

1 Fatties are taking over the city. They are gorging themselves on the entire city's food supply. Dredd must deactivate the food dispensers and then stop the obese ones from hijacking the whole colony.

2 Evil doctor Fribbs has formulated an evolution-reversing enzyme and exposed the whole of the Charles Darwin city block to it. Dredd must fight his way through rampant monkeys, dinosaurs, and amoebas to neutralise the enzyme and the mad professor himself.

3 Soviet Agent Orlock has impregnated the city's water supply with the Blockmania or Football-Stadium virus. It makes everyone go ape and attack each other. Dredd must cut off the water-supply and then hunt down naughty Orlock.

4 Orlock has escaped and fled to the Mega City weather station to polute the rain water with Blockmania. Dredd must capture Orlock before he kills Michael Fish! Nooooo!

5 Blockmania has broken out on all fronts. Dredd finds himself caught in the crossfire between two warring blocks and must neutralise the artillery on both sides.

6 The Dark Judges from another dimension have reappeared and they all need to be taught some basics in personal hygiene. But since they are already dead, how can Dredd defeat them?

7 Dredd has fallen in love. The justice department boffins have schrunk him and placed him inside his own body. He has to explore his abdomen and deactivate four 'passion-pumps' while avoiding vicious libidos. (Really? Ed.)

Macca: Each mission follows a basic formula. Dredd is faced with a nightmare maze of gangways, paths, balconies and slopes. He must march along these, find and deactivate the food dispenser, water conduit etc. and at the same time avoid the 'perps' for among them lurk innocent citizens.

As the crime rate is soaring, shooting the latter by mistake will and him in trouble. Dredd can't die, of course, but his energy can be sorely reduced. When it bottoms, he has to recover in hospitals and in this lapse, the crime rate sails up. If it reaches its peak, Dredd considers himself a failure and quits to become a greengrocer in Warrington.

It is all very well done. It has some neat atmosphere intro screens and music, with snippets being taken straight from the cartoon original. The eight-way scrolling is impeccably smooth, the sprites are impeccably er, smooth. They glide around like championship skaters, even the fatties. Everything is detailed and colourful. Judge Dredd himself is a very impressive sprite, all sausagey thights and stompy walk. He grabs convincingly for his LawGiver and straddles his LawMaster. The bike can be called at any time and used to burn around, mowing down citizens. The only snag is that you can't shoot things when you're riding.

When you can fire, there is a choice of three bullets: normal, armour piercing and heat seeking. The latter is good fun. You simply fire and a bullet with a neat curving tracer spirals off into the nears hot object. Alas, the nearest hot objects are usually the warm internal organs of a nearby innocent citizen.

The levels are very samey; a complex framework of horizontal and diagonal platforms. The objectives are very samey, and the ways of eliminating enemies a bit samey too. In fact, 'samey' seems to be the problem with the whole game. There's no way enough variety in it. The end-of-level scrolling sub-games add something but they end too quickly. The perps' movement patterns are too fixed. Even athletic old Dredd seems rather restricted at times, by Drokk.

The symbol of the '80s revival of British comics, Judge Dredd is the sort of character who wouldn't look out of place in Speedball II. In short, Dredd is psychopathic, brutal and bloodthirsty. His beat is Mega-City One in 2023, an American metropolis with a population of no less than 400 million.

This authoritarian nightmare suffers a suicide every 45 seconds and an ever increasing crime rate - hence the judges who can administer 'instant justice' at the point of a gun. For the average citizen fear of crime and fear of this 'justice' are about even.

The computer game consists of a city block presented in side-on fashion with a maze series of platforms and ramps to explore. Dredd can move about on foot, or by bike if you press 'space'. The Lawmaster bike is obviously the fastest to travel, but Dredd can't shoot from it.

On foot Dredd is armed with a pistol which can fire ordinary bullets, homing missiles or a high-powered laser (which cuts through a whole line of people). The latter two have limited ammo and can be picked up; you can select missiles but the laser stays on until it runs out. This can be a problem when criminals get mixed up with civilians: every innocent you kill increases the crime wave bar - when this hits the maximum it's game over. You can also die if energy falls to zero.

To complete a level, Dredd must find the four special objects scattered around - deactivated by walking by them - before heading for the exit. The end-level confrontation varies according to the adventure: on level One Dredd must leap from carriage to carriage on a food convoy, on level Two a mad scientist must be shot, and level Five features a jetbike chase.

The six adventures draw obvious inspiration from the comics: level Two's Fibbs Lab and Five's Blockmania are based on specific stories.