Tobal No. 1

Prices are listed with the suggested retail price (SRP) first, then the lowest discount price which has been recorded in a British shop, and lastly the likely price you will pay if you buy the title secondhand (S/H). All prices are courtesy of The Game Guide.

Tobal No. 1, Squaresoft, Sony Computer Entertainment, SRP: ú39.99, lowest ú29.99 S/H ú27.00

There are hundreds of beat-em ups. It's one of the defining genres for a games machine: every platform has its favourite.

When the Playstation first launched in September 1995, its beat-em up was Toshinden, which hardcore gamers hated because the special moves were too easy and the blows were hidden behind nasty little white explosions. "They hide the Playstation's appalling polygon collision-handling," grumbled the specialists in that arcane way that specialists have of expressing themselves. Playstation went on to sell millions and become Sony's greatest success since the Walkman and the specialists went on to complain about ActiveX lousing up their Win95 system files.

Hardcore gamers liked Killer Instinct with its puddles of gore on the old SNES, or, better still, Virtual Fighter on Sega's Saturn.

Woossies like me loved Toshinden, simply because the special moves were so easy. You could play it enjoyably first time without getting thrashed by the computer in round 1, whereas other games required hours of practice - plus pale, spotty skin and hairy palms, if hardcore gamers are anything to go by.

But now Playstation has a gamer's beat-em up in the shape of Tobal No. 1. The question is: is it as good as Virtual Fighter 2? Who cares? You can't play VF2 on a Playstation or Tobal on a Saturn, so it isn't an issue. All I know is if you like beat-em ups you'll love Tobal. The moves will tax your dexterity without tying your thumbs in knots. And although it can be played casually, you won't get far in Tobal's quest to find the greatest fighter in the universe (so what did you expect, no plot?) without considerable skill. The game's AI learns quickly and if you repeat the same move more than twice it'll make you look like Kasparov up against Deep Blue.

The characters in VF2 looked very solid and believable, expect maybe that improbably pneumatic Russian woman whose wobbly bits never wobbled no matter how hard she kicked or how far she was thrown through the air. The characters of Tobal never quite reach the same credibility: their Eurasian appearance means they look more cute than tough with their little triangular features made for the Japanese market. The movements are very human, though: those man-years games developers have put into image capture using human martial arts actors have paid off.

Chuji-Wu looks like he's straight out of a Manga film, but someone should have told him that flat-tops went out in the mid-eighties.

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Reviewed by Andrew Charles worth