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A quirky little Sega arcade conversion here, I suppose you could call it a sideways scrolling beat 'em up with ducks. Curiously, the ducks looked more like woodpeckers! This game really finds its fort with two players, then the fun and mayhem really begins. Squabbles over food and weapons come to the fore. There are six stages to battle your way through, lots of cutesy enemies and some end of level guardians, which whilst cute, are a bit more deadly. The graphics are colourful and cutely rendered and the music soundtrack is lovely and jaunty. Perhaps the scrolling is a little sluggish, but it it's certainly manageable. More annoying is attacking an enemy at a diagonal angle, it's so tricky to do and best avoided in my view. The stairs are sometimes tricky to navigate as well. There is lots of enjoyable fun to be had here and with a nice dash of humour as well.

This is pretty decent conversion by Domark of the classic Atari arcade game for the Amiga. With mouse as an option you have analogue control, which helps out a lot with the feel of the game. The game features 4 different stages - destroying communication probes, skirmishes with the AT-AT walkers, space battles with TIE fighters and avoiding asteroids. I suppose they were done to tie in with the film and distinguish it from the first game, but some of the elements don't work very well. The dogfight in space has been done before and the asteroid dodging is just tedious. The graphics (simple vectors) capture the feel of the arcade version. The sound effects, music and samples are near enough arcade perfect. However, what counts against this game is that it gets very repetitive after a while and sort of loses its appeal. That was always the main problem of the game - trying to live up to its predecessor, which whilst having a more simple game stages seems more compelling and enjoyable.

Fire & Ice is one of those cutesy Platform games which has cutesy background music which can make you feel a little ill. Set across various parts of the world you play as Cool Coyote and jump and walk to make progress. The levels as well as being big, bold and cutesy are full of other creatures whose aim in life is to stop you by any means possible. Starting in an icy land of Eskimos, penguins and sea lions all intent on bringing about your icy demise, you have to quite literally ice your enemies, freezing them by firing icy balls and then walking into them to shatter them. Meanwhile you take Cool Coyote on a pretty standard platform adventure jumping on platforms, over large gaps and avoiding the many traps. Collect all the parts of the key and unlock the doorway at the end of a level to go onto the next. After a few cold levels, the ice gives way to a medieval castle inhabited by archers, and little men armed with shields making killing them a little harder. Having crossed a moat by jumping a row of crocodiles as they try to eat you the difficulty ramped up way high again and time ran out to carry on playing, but there are plenty more lands to jump and run through. The levels seemed to start off very difficult but then had a lull becoming almost too easy before going back to extremely difficult to pass again. I prefer to see a nice progression to difficulty as you get better at the game. It almost made me give up getting past the very first level, but then whizzed through the next few. Fire and Ice is a little addictive but it wouldn't make my top 10 platform games from the past due to its cuteness and random difficulty settings.

First Samurai is an action adventure platformer (think things like Gods and Myth) from Vivid Image and one of the best examples of that type of game. In the game you play a samurai on the revenge trail of the Demon King, who kills your master in the dramatic opening introduction. Set across 10 different levels (one of which features three-way parallax scrolling) you start off with just your bare feet and fists. Then after battling several enemy creatures along the way (of which there are many different types) you built up enough magical power to get a sword, this is where the fun really begins. Along the way there are a few additional weapons as well (daggers, axes, etc), which you normally throw at your enemies. Each level requires you to collect some magical items to complete a puzzle of some sort (e.g. the first level required logs to complete a bridge) then you to took on the end of level baddie. The levels are quite varied; 4 were set in Feudal Japan, 1 on a bullet train and the remaining 5 in the present day Japan. There are a few puzzles along the way too but nothing too taxing. The gameplay mechanics just seemed to have been so well thought out. The graphics and sound are both top-notch as well here. Now remember everyone: Oh no! My sword!

This is the classic Sega arcade game converted to the Amiga. Apparently, someone called Death Adder has captured the King and Princess of Yuria. He has also taken hold of the Golden Axe (hence the title) and has threatened to destroy it, unless the people of Yuria accept him as their leader. You and a second player (if you want) have to take him on. There are 3 different types of characters to chose: an axe welding dwarf, a broadsword welding barbarian and a long-sword welding amazon. Lots of varied enemies abound along the way. One of the game's novelties is that you can equip yourself with a dragon to use as a sort of medieval tank. Just knock off a dragon rider then carefully climb aboard the resting dragon. It did take some skill to do that, but it added a powerful weapon to your arsenal, breathing fire and tail swiping your enemies along the way. Another enemy to contend with is the giants, these beasts are massive and pack a lethal punch. Not only that but lots of enemy elves come and fight you - just to keep you busy! If you're lucky, you could pick up a magic potion bottle from them, then use that as a kind of smart bomb. The final enemy is Death Adder himself, unlike in the Sega Megadrive and PC versions where it was his mentor Death Bringer. The graphics are quite good, perhaps they look a little washed out compared to the Megadrive version though. The scrolling is fine, only the pseudo 3D effect on the backgrounds of some levels affect you, especially when you have to jump, it becomes difficult. The music and sound effects are well implemented in the game too. It is very enjoyable with two players but a quite short game. Not that this is a fault of this version, the arcade version is short as well and this does go against it. The controls feel like a lot of random button bashing as well, trying to compress the arcade controls into a one fire button system was always going to work out that way. A decent enough arcade conversion, which whilst fun, doesn't have that much of a replay factor to it.