One of Imagine's coin-op conversions. And a weedy one at that. Legend of Kage wasn't exactly a high-powered, custom-built arcade machine so at least it was possible to have a reasonable home version. In theory.

In reality, it's plain, unimaginitive and not very exciting. Not forgetting a tad easy. Legend of Kage is one of these games which you can end up running through all four levels more than once in a single sitting. After a little practise, of course.

The sprite graphics are tiny, weedy and nondescript. They're little more advanced than stickmen. The fire-breathing bad-guy who you see at the end of levels one and four is unimpressive and not worthy of the label 'end of level' as that infers a grander, tougher enemy. Mr fire-breather isn't.

The background graphics - other than level three - are average. They're colourful in a functional sense, nothing spectacular or cleverly drawn. Level four is certainly the best-looking in the game. This contrasts significantly to level three which as a static image doesn't look too bad. When it's scrolling - vertically mind you - your eyes start to glaze as the background becomes painful to look at.

Actually, the scrolling - in any direction - is smooth. Which is certainly a plus for Legend of Kage. There are a couple of other plusses to the game if you're feeling charitable. Firstly, the game is easy to play and after several games it's possible to complete it. There is a slight challenge to Kage, so those people who enjoy Speccy games but aren't any good at them will get a sense of achievement out of playing LoK.

The intro music is typically 48k, so it's tinny and BEEPy. I'm sure there must be fans of this type of score so for them it's another 'hurrah'. The in-game effects are limited to buzzes whenever a missile is fired either from you or at you. Minimalist effects here.

So that's the end of the plusses. And the sarcasm. The plot has you attempting to rescue Princess Kiri from the Dragon King (the fire-breathing bad guy I referred to earlier). So we're not exactly looking at an original story line here. For some odd reason you have to off ten ninjas in levels one and two. That's ten. No more, no less. And when you do off ninja number10 level one has you fighting the Dragon King whilst level two is just completed (with nothing extra to do). I think having a set number of enemies to dispose of was a bad way to make fifty percent of the game last longer than a minute or two.

Fighting the Dragon King isn't difficult. The DK jumps up and down with some energy. Occasionally he's try and get close and breathe fire on you but keep shooting in his direction and after a couple of shots he's gone. Well, at least until level four. When he's back again. Hardly a challenge.

Level three has you jumping up the screen. As I've already said, it's not pleasant. Thankfully you've not got to kill anything so you've just got to jump up the screen. Level four has you off more ninjas until you get to Princess Kiri. You'll meet the Dragon King again. Once he's offed (again), you warp back to level one.

To be fair to LoK, it is twenty years old this year (the arcade game was released in 1985). Then again, as with bad behaviour from senior citizens or toddlers, age can't be used as a defence. There are older games than this are that are more enjoyable, have a greater challenge to them and just aren't crap. It's not even one of those games which you'd want to 'dip in' for ten minutes every now and again. LoK simply isn't good or different enough for you to want to play it instead of 10,000 other ninja-based games.

Even though it's in the Worst Conversion Ever category, from what I can gather Legend of Kage the arcade game isn't very good either. Which (a) explains a few things and (b) it means that a crap arcade game accurately converted equals a crap home computer game. So this is the 'best fit' category. What a waste of time. The Speccy can do so much better than this.