SMOOTH criminal Wacko Jacko has found yet another way to be seen in public without having to leave his oxygen tent. Moonwalker has been a book, a film, a T-shirt, a cuddly toy, a type of dance and now my Emerald Isle homeland has produced a twin disc game.

There are four stages, two viewed from above and two from the side. Each stage is preceded by a good animated sequence and accompanied by short repeating sections of sampled MJ music. A bit like the video really.

The first stage reminds me of my long standing all-time favourite game, Rally-X. Jacko walks around the detailed landscape ina small scrolling window trying to collect parts of his rabbit suit, avoiding the over-zealous attentions of numerous fans.

The next stage adds a motorbike and the occasional flattened pedestrian. Don't stop until you get enough green shiny orbs. Then you can transform into a car and jump over a roadblock.

Game three, and Jacko is clad in white suit, armed with a vicious line in automatic firearms. Sideways scrolling displays the interior of a gaming club where there ain't no sunshine when you're gone.

Making sure the baddies have been blown off the wall is the only way to beat it. When you use all the ammo, more has got to be there when you need it, or its bad news all round.

The final stage is the real thriller. Our heroic plasticised young thing transforms yet again, this time into a robot with which you don't wanna be starting something. You have to convince some nasty kidnapper about the way your young girlfriend makes you feel or she's out of your life and it's farewell, my summer love, for ever.

You will certainly spend more than one day of your life playing this game. The stages are sufficiently different to provide interest and sufficiently tough to make it last. The graphics and animations provide the grab factor and if you are a Jackson fan the sampled music will come as an added bonus.

There have been many games based on films but here it is not so much based on a film as a person: Michael Jackson. His name has hardly ever been out of the papers or the charts during the '80s, but can this popular singing star be transformed into a good computer game?

The game is split into four sections, all of which are featured in the film, of course. In the first, Michael is at the film studios being chased by his fans and has to find a disguise and then escape on a motorbike. The disguise is a rabbit suit, the parts of which have to be picked up in the correct order: feet first, head last. There are also four pieces of equipment - a camera, a microphone, a spotlight and a key - to be found.

MJ can walk or run around the studio 'lot', which is viewed from overhead and has a scanner showing the fans and objects on it. You can only run for short periods though, so save it for escaping from tight spots. If Mikey gets caught by a fan he loses a platinum disc: no discs and it is game over. There is also a time limit.

The first section is relatively simple once you have learnt the map, so it is quickly on to Stage Two. Now you are the rabbit on the bike, racing round the city trying to collect orbs and destroy drugs. It is viewed from above again with a similar collection of fans and troopers chasing Michael about.

There are four lots of orbs to collect, and when the last orb of each set is collected the bike transforms into the Stratos car and you have to leap over a barrier to the next area. In the last of the four areas the bike becomes a jet bike, grabbing the orbs from the water.

Now it is on to the Club '30s nightclub where gunmen appear at the windows and try to shoot you. A gun and bullets are to be found lying around, so you can fight back. Supplies of bullets have to be continually picked up from the random places around the club where they are left. If MJ can get through this there is a final confrontation with the bad guys where he turns into a robot to blast guards and a laser cannon.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

At the beginning of the game and in between each of the sections, there are some superb animated action screens. The game screens are not as good: the first two levels look very plain, but the last two are more detailed and more interesting. Samples of Michael's music run throughout the game. They sound fine but are on the repetitive side: constraints of memory one presumes.

JUDGEMENT

None of the four sections stands out particularly as being a great game, but all four are enjoyable. As a package it will take some time to complete and provide a fair deal of entertainment. Its main problem is that there is no particular 'high' in gameplay terms. There is a lot of good things, but nothing great.

Michael J. seems to have done rather well for himself. After all, is it that wacko earns over sixty million a year? This should be enough to tell us that Moonwalker, the movie, was not made for financial gain, but more likely as an ego trip.

The first level finds Michael trapped on a movie set being pursued by hordes of fans. His only means of escape is to disguise himself as a rabbit. En route Michael must also collect film equipment and run over packets of drugs left behind by the evil Drug Baron.

Next MJ has to collect crystals in order to transform himself in a super powered sports car. Another maze section follows, also featuring small, not particularly imaginative, graphics.

Stage Three is the famous Thirties night club (as featured in the Smooth Criminal video). Now Michael has to collect a gun and seriously mess with the bad guys. As they appear at the windows they have to be shot. At the end of this level the Drug Baron kidnaps Michael's friend Katy and runs into the next level.

Finally Michael transforms into a robot for the final face off with the Drug Baron. This time he is up against a small army of hoodlums and the Baron's massive laser cannon. If he survives all that, Michael transforms once more and whisks off into the sunset.

Each level is accompanied by nice, if some what repetitive, samples from the album - one feature which helps to save the game, whilst between each section is a short animated cartoon sequence outlining the plot. They are so well done though, that they tend to over-shadow the levels themselves.

Licensing a film like Moonwalker would have been a big, not to mention expensive, risk for anybody. And US Gold have done surprisingly well considering the overall limited scope for a game, and the legal restraints from Jackson's lawyer. They insisted for instance, that the graphics in one scene to be changed: Michael is very proud of the fact that he can move about on tip toes, so the Jackson estate made sure that this remarkable events was captured on the software.

My overall impression of the game is that it is limited. The first two sections are almost identical, while the last two follow very similar lines.

This will go done well with fans of the film and the artist, but for the rest of us, it is a miss.

America, 'land of the free, home of the weird' as the Statue of Liberty says at one point in the movie. Possibly the world's weirdest rock star starts his adventure in The Studios, the scene of the Speed Demon video when Michael is pursued by a mob of Claymation fans.

To escape, he must disguise himself as a rabbit and roar off on a motorbike. The Studios are represented by an overhead view of a smoothly scrolling maze infested with such Jackson fans as the Granny, Cowboy and Biff brothers. There are seven pieces of the suit to be found, from shoes to rabbit head, which must be collected in the correct order. A camera, microphone, spotlight, and key are also to be picked up and Michael must run over any packets of drugs he finds. If a fan catches him, Michael must give away one of his silver discs - which are also lost if Michael is shot(!).

The next level is The City, where the rabbit-disguised Jackson zooms about trying to avoid fans and Mr Big's armed henchmen. Michael must find ten orbs to transform into the fabulous Stratos rocket car which can smash through roadblocks. Despite our hero being 'very anti-violence' you must run over the henchmen, turning them into an ugly red stain on the pavement. Once the last orb has been collected, Michael turns into the car, with a limited amount of time to smash through the roadblock. This level is repeated four times, with different mazes and vehicles.

Club 30s is where Jacko must shoot a set number of villains dotted around the horizontally scrolling night club, while dodging the bullets and collecting ammunition. At the end of this level one of Micheal's friends is captured leading him to...

...The Arena. Now Mr 'anti-violence' starts massacring people by the dozen. After transforming into a robot Micheal revolves around in the arena, moving a cursor to aim his guns. While blasting the henchmen as they appear, Michael must watch out for a plasma cannon which pokes its massive nose in from time to time.