US Gold
Emerald Software
£8.99/£12.99

Madonna's been kidnapped and the villains responsible are more violent than Sean Penn and crazier than Iran's mad mullahs. While the pop world panics, music lovers applaud and the police wonder where to being our hero takes the law into his own hands.

The first level of this Irem coin-op conversion has the vigilante strolling down a very quiet and peaceful-looking street. The bower boys soon arrive though, fully equipped with lead piping lead piping, knives, shuriken stars etc. To avoid getting duffed up, the hero must punch and kick the heck out of the thugs. Although initially unarmed, he can pick up a nunchukka (two pieces of wood joined by a bicycle chain) to really bash the baddies. But watch that energy bar as even the vigilante takes a trip to rigor mortis land if hit too many times. A timer is also in operation - ninety nine seconds are allowed to reach the end of level where a big fatso waits to give him a good pounding.

Beat him and the multiload gives four more levels, including junkyards, bridges, another street scene and finally a construction site. And at the end of it all there's a tearful reunion with Madonna.

I'm a great fan of thump-'em-up games and Vigilante is no exception. After playing the brilliant PC Engine version I couldn't wait to see what the Speccy could do. I'm pleased to report that this game has retained most of the original's pleasantly frustrating gameplay. At the start, the time limit is easy to beat, but as you get deeper into the action the sheer number of enemies slows you down. I wasn't too pleased with Ocean's attempt at Dragon Ninja (one of my other fave beat-' em-ups), so it's a case of well done US Gold!

MARK [88%]

There may be the odd spoilsport (Mike!) who will say that Vigilante looks and plays like Renegade and endless other titles. This may be true, but but most of them never proved to be much of a challenge - unlike Vigilante! The enemies in each level don't vary too much with the occasional biker trying to run you down and nasty men with sticks beating you up, but there is a different hit man at the end of each level to give you a hard time just when you think you've finished. Colourful backdrops and detailed sprites boost up the graphics rating, and although sound leaves much to be desired, the game holds together well. Vigilante is definitely one of the best beat-'em-ups around.
NICK [85%]

Vigilante has more than a slight similarity to a certain game called Renegade! That said, it's fun and addictive. Gameplay is excellent, though the content of a scrolling kick-'em-up game is obviously limited. It's quite difficult to play well; not too hard, but enough of a challenge to make it very addictive. The only real disappointment is the sound - FX aren't exactly overindulgent, and there's no music to speak of. But the graphics are very good - the colour/mono graphics option is useful (it also means I can't moan about the garishness or boringness of the colour!). Vigilante is a jolly good biff; value for your dosh if you didn't buy Renegade. If you did, then it might not be such a wise investment, but still well worth thinking about.
MIKE [84%]

US Gold
£8.99/£12.99
Reviewer: Duncan MacDonald

Turf, eh? Funny old stuff dirty on one side, green the other. One lone piece of turf is not a lot of use, but bung thirty together and voila - an extremely small garden. And things go uphill from there - the more turf you add, the more spacious and luxurious your lawn becomes. Or there's the alternative method, by lying the sods (Oo-er) upside-down you can instantly transform the same area into a mud wrestling rink (or a worm sanctuary). Charge admission! Make loads of 'spondies'! No wonder the double-sided little floric slabs are such a valuable commodity - and no wonder that the Street Gang in this game are after yours. (It's not that kind of turf they're after and well you know it. Ed.)

Actually, Vigilante is another beat 'em up in the mould of Renegade, Target Renegade and Dragon Ninja. You know the format (unless you don't, in which case, erm, you don't) - it's a left/right, right/left scrolling kick and punch people until they're dead, but all the time they're trying to do exactly the same thing to you game.

The Street Gang (your enemies) are a bunch of skinheads who have kidnapped Madonna (the scamps), and are holding her hostage. You're out to get her back while your foes are out to capture your turf (Tell the truth this time. Ed.) your 'manor', your, eeerr, basically your territory. Um, apart from that there's not a load to tell you.

If you've seen Renegade, Target Renegade, or Dragon Ninja, then you'll know what's going to happen already. You fight through hordes and hordes of rather violent people until you reach the end of a level, whereupon you stumble upon a particularly nasty specimen who takes a lot more bashing to send to the stomping ground in the sky. This having been accomplished it's time to load in the next level where the foes are a mite different and so are the backdrops.

In the gameplay stakes, Vigilante offers nothing new. You have the standard fighting moves and can pick up weapons along the way. And in the graphics stakes it's a slight step back from the excellence of, say, Target Renegade. Not that they're bad, don't get me wrong - they're just not special in any way. The colour is a bit of an eyesore at times (most times in fact) as, for instance, when there's a strip of white and blue in the background you find everybody has white legs and blue torsos! Mind you, there is a 'turn off colour option'.

Erm, what can I say? I could say "boing", but it probably wouldn't help anyone. What I will say is that Vigilante is a little behind its time. Why didn't it come out a year ago, while there still a bit of room on the bandwagon? Still, if you absolutely love beat 'em ups to death, and have finished all the ones currently available then get this - but don't expect to be astonished by anything.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

RICH PELLEY and JON PILLAR are at it again and they want us to join on. Oo-er. (So bring along an extra lightbulb just to be safe.)

Kixx
£2.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

This one looks suspiciously like a sideways scrolling beat-'em-up to me, a bit like Kung-Fu Master (if you remember that). Y'know, one where the idea is to make your way from one side of the scrolling playing area to the other, kicking and punching baddies until they die. There aren't too many beat-'em-ups like this around, as most also allow you to move back into and out of the screen as well (hello, Target Renegade), and, to tell you the truth, these sort are a lot more fun anyway 'cos you can pick which baddies you want to fight with, as well as how and when. But since you can only move left and right here, things are predictably far more boring. Very little skill is actually needed either - it doesn't really matter which move you use (of which there aren't many anyway), and you don't have to have any real sense of timing, except to avoid the bloke who shoots at you (and is almost always the cause of your death). There's an end-of-level baddie too, but I found that if I'd remembered to pick up the weapon during the level - one of those toilet chain things or whatever they're called (Nunchukas. Ed) on Level 1 - it's no problem to finish him off.

The graphics are generally crap, including dreadful colour clash (although you can play in mono) and bad scrolling, and there's an annoying wait every time you start a go. But the greatest problem has to be the lack of challenge, because you don't have to have much skill or practice to get anywhere (as long as you watch out for the bloke with the gun). There're loads of levels (multiload, tape-recorder fans), but all that means is different backdrops, different looking baddies but similar gameplay all the way through. It's certainly not up to Target Renegade's standards, and as that's also available on budget, I'd recommend either buying that, or giving your money to me.

Label: US Gold
Author: Emerald Software
Price: £8.99/£12.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: None
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Does wearing a little red beret give you the right to go around kicking people in the head? It does if you're a Vigilante, the only person hard enough to stand up to the gangs of howling skinheads who dominate the streets of New York 1994.

Now you won't get much of a thrill or excitement when you hear the plot. Your bit of stuff, Madonna, has been kidnapped by the skins. I don't think this could be THE Madonna - she'd only have to break into a chorus of "Material Girl" and they'd be jumping out of the windows with their fingers in their ears.

Anyhow, you want to rescue 'the girlie, and the only way to do it is to kick and punch your way through skins against some pretty average backgrounds.

If this all sounds like Streetfighter, Renegade, Target Renegade, Renegade 3, Dragon Ninja, Tiger Road and Human Killing Machine - that's because it is. While there's nothing at all wrong with Vigilante, it's coming out much too late, and doesn't really add much to the existing games.

As you move along across the scrolling backgrounds, you are attacked from both sides. To start off, it's easy to despatch your opponents with a high kick or a series of punches. Life gets more difficult when they attack you from both sides at once; it's very difficult to kill one off without receiving huge amounts of damage from the other. Only very precise alternate hits will see you through this problem.

Even more horrifying are the Men Who Put Their Fingers in Your Ear. Though these tubby terrors are easy to kill with a single blow, if they get too close they appear to put their fingers in your ear, and you die horribly. Very strange.

If you can get to the end of a level, you come across a huge leather-jacketed thug who takes a good deal of bashing and beating to dispose of. Then it's back to the tape recorder to load up the next stage, which takes place in a junkyard. The backgrounds here are a little more interesting than the street scenes of level one, but the opponents are largely the same except for a star-chucking ninja.

There are extra weapons such as nunchukas which you can pick up along the way, but for some reason they don't seem to do you a great deal of good; to be honest, it took me so long to get through to level two that I was too exhausted to carry on playing it. Am I getting old, or is Vigilante just much much too hard?

There's an interesting option to switch off the colour, which eliminates the annoying background colour clashes, and apart from some pointless. bleepings the sound's OK. I could live without the tedious introduction screen telling me what I already know, that Madonna is in the hands of the skinheads and only I can rescue.

Overall, then, this one's a jump at the bandwagon which ends up smeared all over the tarmac.

US Gold
Amiga, Spectrum
Spectrum £8.99, Amiga £24.99

The skinheads have kidnapped Madonna, so it's up to you to take the power into your own hands. Why can't he call the Bill like everyone else, hmm? Well, the hero of this arcade game doesn't call the Rozzers, and like most fully trained ninjas sets off down longest street on the Earth to find Madonna.

Along the way he bumps into a few of the skins wot done the kidnap, and they politely ask him if he wouldn't mind turning around and going back, because they're awfully frightened of him. Okay, so they actually attack him with bottles, knives and those funny Bruce Lee things with two sticks and a chain in the middle.

The game proceeds along familiar lines. You scroll down the street to the wacky beat of the house soundtrack, and the skinheads just keep on coming. You can pick up weapons along the way, and use them to splat some of the more persistent villains. But if they grab you, you may find that you lose them so use them quickly. If you get to the end of all the levels, you get Madonna.

I was quite disappointed by the way, that it wasn't THE Madonna, but just some bint who calls herself Madonna. Tsk! And there I was thinking that at the end I'd be dating the pouting, beauty-spotted, belly button wobbler herself. Never mind, it's only a game after all.

And having said that it IS only a game. If it's your taste for another ninja beat 'em up which isn't the copy of Renegade I, II or III you played yesterday, then fair goes. You'll love it. Vigilante has all the stuff which made the street ninja arcade machines so popular, and is very slickly produced. BUT... it is just a variation on the same theme.

And next time, heroes, tell your girlfriend not to talk to any strange skinheads. Only nice ones like me. (grin)

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £8.99, Diskette: £12.99
Amiga £14.95
Sega Master System £24.95

Spectrum Vigilante comes across extremely well. The graphics may be missing some finishing touches but the gameplay's all there. Attacks come hard and fast - often too fast.

The Sega game almost matches the PC Engine conversion. Its graphic artists have gone to town on the back drops with good looking sprites to match. Pricey, but as much fun to play as the others.

The Vigilante character has been shrunk on the Amiga to keep the playing area in proportion, resulting in some graphic detail loss. But gameplay stands up well in that the Vigilante has a better chance of rescuing Madonna. On the minus side, the limited number of moves Vigilante can make narrow the games scope, but then the arcade version wasn't too hot on gameplay either. Still, Vigilante is bread and butter for the 8- and 16-bits and proves immediately playable and strongly challenging.