A MORE sedate affair than Underwurlde, Knight Lore brings us a stage closer to true arcade adventure. Ultimate has devised a technique it calls 'filmation' to depict 3D graphics in quite extraordinary style. Sabreman has been cursed and must change at night into a werewolf. In order to lift the curse, he must find the correct ingredients to counter the spell and dump them in the wizard's cauldron. The wizard lives in a labyrinth of caves and chambers full of traps and strange guardians.

Each chamber presents a specific problem. Some are easy to negotiate, others difficult. A certain amount of imaginative thought may be required, and the judicious use of objects found in the network is recommended.

But it is the graphics which truly astound. The first time you discover that you can push objects around, climb up and down, and all without flicker or any loss of speed, you will be amazed. When you move behind an object, you pass out of view. Piles of blocks may hide terrible traps - you will only find out by leaping onto them and testing them.

As an added bonus, the position in which you start changes from game to game, so there are always new problems to face and new routes to discover. Although it is relatively easy to explore the maze, it is much more difficult to work out which objects you need or discover the ingredients for the curative potion.

In order to produce such advanced effects, Ultimate has had to use only one colour for each screen. Careful shading is used to create the detail which might otherwise be done in colour. The overall effect is of a crepuscular world of claustrophobic menace. Does that chest hide an important secret? Is the span of rock to the high arch safe or will it drop me onto the poisoned spikes? How can I climb a wall three times my own height? What is the old boot for? Those questions have been asked by adventurers for years. Now the arcade wizards can taste that kind of magic for themselves.

Chris Bourne

MACMAN in the Treasure Caves is a program designed to practice subtraction. Macman is a character dressed in a tartan suit who is used throughout a series of programs developed by Sinclair Research and Macmillan Education and programmed by Intelligent Software. This particular program deals with the second level of subtraction from level one (1-10) to level five (up to 41-50). The level can be set or will self advance according to the child's ability.

The object of the game is to gain treasure, the user is asked to find the difference between two numbers. When some answers have been given correctly, Macman can go to the caves and play an arcade type game while answering more questions.

The game is not very exciting, certainly not up to the standard of the Psion Estimator Racer. It is less flexible as it only tests subtraction, for the age group 4-8.

Theo Wood

MUTANT diamonds, bone-crunching boulders, and deadly amoeba are just some of the ingredients which make up Boulder Dash.

You play the part of Rockford, an intrepid explorer who has just got lost in a string of underground caverns. Suddenly he notices something glinting in the darkness. Rushing over he picks it up and a boulder crashes down from above. Splat!

The idea is to guide Rockford through each of the caverns, collecting all the diamonds, in a set time limit which will gain him entry to the next cave. It can be tricky as each diamond lurks beneath a precariously balanced boulder - so look out.

In each successive cavern, the time limit is shorter and the tasks harder, diamonds when released will turn into poisonous butterflies, deadly amoeba has to be contained by dislodging boulders to form dams and you have to work out how to get past the fireflies, guardians of the jewels.

Boulder Dash was originally released in the States by First Star for the Atari 800. It was an instant hit and has been converted to the Commodore 64 and the licence bought by an arcade manufacturer.

According to Front Runner, Boulder Dash has been described as "one of the finest examples of Spectrum programming ever". Balderdash! Slow and jerky movement dog Rockford's every step making it difficult to pass through each cave within the time limit specified.

Although there are many features in the game including four interactive puzzles and five difficulty levels to each of the 16 caves your excitement can quickly turn to frustration when time and time again, Rockford is bombarded by boulders.

Clare Edgeley

FRESH from the jungles of Sabre Wulf the Sabreman returns, just in time to make pots of money in the Christmas rush.

Ultimate has released two new games featuring the character, both with the superb graphics we have come to expect from the company, but different in conception.

Underwurlde is a sort of vertical Atic Atac. Sabreman is now given the ability to leap about the screen, and has a variety of weapons used as missiles. The task, as ever, is to escape. Monsters, which include evil plants, eagles, gargoyles, flying jellyfish and harpies which may actually carry you off, do not kill you as such but bounce you around the screen, knocking you off your perches.

The Underwurlde is a series of large chambers connected by chimneys. Fall too far and you will lose a life. To negotiate the climbs, you must either leap from perch to perch, or hitch a ride from volcanic bubbles, which steam up from craters on the lower levels. It is often easier to descend to the caverns in order to rise.

The game is extremely fast and colourful; those braggart voices which claim previous Ultimate productions are too easy will find life in the Underwurlde is no picnic. You will need to find the right weapons to deal with special foes, work out a route to the open air, and all the time maintain a ferocious pace of reactions and nimble movement to avoid disaster.

Chris Bourne

HEY rat fans, Roland has a competitor in Jasper, a 22 screen arcade game which is about as much fun as bubonic plague.

In this overland, and overhyped, version of Manic Miner Jasper has to jump and crawl through assorted obstacles, such as yellow bears and spiders, collecting treasure chests and money bags which grow on trees. The bags give the furry rodent energy and extra lives, all of which you will need to get through even the first three screens.

One novelty which is not available in Manic Miner is that you can move off both edges of the screen into other scenarios without scrambling through exits. The game is not mappable as we found when we went off the first screen with its bionic bunny to a prowling wild cat. Moving back to what should have been a rabbit screen disclosed a new format with yellow panthers. Confused?

The game is not compatible with joysticks, or at least does not proclaim their use on the cassette insert. Once loaded the computer launches into a demo mode and no joysticks show up there either. Jasper may only require a few control keys to play but it is an obvious candidate for joysticks and it is amazing that they are not included.

John Gilbert

WORDSETTER forms part of the Learn to Read series produced last year by Sinclair and Macmillan. The accompanying booklet has plenty of tips for parents emphasising the enjoyment of the activities.

Theme is a card game for two players. The theme is displayed over two sets of six cards - at the zoo, food and so on. The game operates on two levels, either a picture and word or word only appears at the bottom of the screen and the players have to decide whether it belongs to their theme, and press 1 or 0. If correct, a card is turned over. The first player to turn over six cards wins, but if a key is pressed incorrectly the player loses a card.

Order is concerned with putting sentences in their correct order. The sentence appears at the top of the screen jumbled up with each word numbered. The child has then to complete the sentence by pressing the correct numbers.

Theo Wood

IN THE fabulous super-fast Tachyon Command you are invited to kill wave upon wave of aliens. Two waves in fact. The first lot are Galaxian-type invaders which drop bombs. The second lurk in a tunnel and come at you one at a time. If you beat the tunnel aliens you get the first lot again.

No, wait. There are original points to Tachyon Command. In the first place, you get six ships. So what? you ask. But in fabulous super-fast etc etc you can have them ALL AT ONCE! The six ships sit in a pyramid formation at the bottom of the screen all firing away. If you do not hit something you must be pretty dumb.

The fabulous super-fast ships look like little white triangles. The romance of being a collection of little white triangles lost in a distant galaxy was clearly a strong selling point for Century Software.

Fabulous etc Software should have stuck to selling superpriced books about programming. At least the public would have been spared the sorry saga of the super-fast eternal triangles.

Chris Bourne

TWO new programs by Psion and ASK, designed to improve mental arithmetic, mix arcade action with a mental workout.

Estimator Racer takes the form of a car rally, at first on clear roads, then with hazards, and some night driving before the end.

A sum appears at the bottom of the screen and you have to steer the car into the lane labelled with a number nearest the answer.

If you are not in the correct lane at the half kilometre mark you are stopped and gently reminded. All that wastes time, of course, and the object of the game is to finish the rally as fast as possible.

Four types of car can be chosen, and a practice rally of any part of the game. You can choose any kind of sum, + - * /, and of course the faster the car the harder the sum. At 300 kph the half kilometre mark happens rather too often.

Number Painter is a similar program using a ladder game. You are given a target number and then have to reach the target from your start number. Various numbers are dotted round the screen, + 4, *7, -3, /5, and the object is to paint out those numbers until you reach the target. There is a choice of painting gangs to vary speed.

Theo Wood

GHOULIES isn't about what you think, so stop sniggering and pay attention.

Long ago a wicked monk got up to some very nasty business. The Inquisition tried him but he would not spill the beans. His secret now lies in the ruins of an ancient labyrinth, along with some treasure and a lot of extremely unpleasant psychic manifestations - ghouls, ghosts and all the other things that go bump in the night. The locality is terrorised by such creatures. Your job is to seek out the hidden truth and to survive.

Ghoulies is a text adventure which looks like it was written on the Quill but features some fancy graphics. These occupy the top few lines of the screen and are colourful and very well drawn. They are also almost instantaneous and waste no time.

The descriptions are reasonably detailed and there is a fine sense of atmosphere in the game. That is intensified, not interrupted, by the graphics. The general presentation alone is enough to make you want to play whilst the plot is intricate and riddled with hazard. You will get a good picture of a superstition-ridden late medieval village, with its apothecary, alchemist and hostile locals . . . not forgetting the ruinous abbey and its dark, foreboding crypt. IMS deserves a pat on the back for this attractive and well made program.

Richard Price

DORCASIA, like Camelot, was a fairly well regulated place until the evil Zendos threw the main switch and plunged the country into perpetual darkness. The 'spirit' of each month of the year was trapped in a secret rune and then tucked away in the depths of his castle.

As might be expected you must search the castle and destroy the hour glasses which hold the months. There is also a runic inscription on each glass and you must decipher that to exorcise the spell on the month.

As there are 12 months there are 12 separate quests, all of which interlink to some extent. To solve the full puzzle you must break a number of codes and the game becomes more difficult as you progress.

Like its predecessor, The Oracle's Cave, the game features animated graphics. The explorer walks and climbs from location to location encountering various monsters and magical objects. Those are finely drawn in attractive colour and are an improvement on the Cave's rather monochromatic pictures.

Text can be used as in a standard adventure and the buffer will accept reasonably complex sentences, including some adverbs.

The Runes of Zendos is carefully produced and will have considerable appeal to amateur cryptologists.

Richard Price

ENGLEFIELD Software has produced a series of programs designed for use in schools. Those adopt the top down approach where the teacher is fully in control of the activities, and after a set of exercises is completed the message appears on the screen 'show page to teacher'.

Clown helps with sound blends presenting a gapped word such as l..ther, and a choice of three blends to use, for example, ea, ie, ee. The word has to be typed in, and if correct part of a clown's face is built up.

High Wire tests knowledge of tables given a choice of table and speed level. If the answer is correct an acrobat starts to walk over a high wire. If incorrect he falls off.

The graphics used for letters and pictures are basic and rewards are not very exciting. Progress such as these are exactly the same as worksheets and may be useful to save paper, but present no significant advance. They may have a place in remedial classes where constant repetition of tasks is important.

Theo Wood

COMPUTERS being, supposedly, very good at mathematics, it is not surprising that a plethora of Pool and Snooker simulations have been produced. Capitalising on the rent-a-star concept behind Daley Thompson's Decathlon, CDS Micro Systems has released Steve Davis Snooker, complete with a cassette insert portraying the wonder sizing up a likely pot.

The game is not at all bad. The screen displays an overhead view of the table. To play a shot, you move a cross-hair sight to a point on the table through which you want the white ball to pass - the point does not have to be next to another ball, giving scope for several styles of lining up shots.

You then set the power, and indicate on a large picture of the white ball where you wish to strike it, allowing the player to use spin shots if desired.

The geometry of the program, and the way in which spin is taken into account, is more realistic. It will take about as long to line up your shot as it takes Cliff Thorburn to play a simple stroke, but then snooker is not the fastest sport around anyway. On average a frame should take half an hour, about the same as in real life.

Problems occur however with foul shots. Although the correct penalties are awarded and the option to take the shot or put the player who fouled in again is there, there is no provision for a free ball. Nor does there appear to be any recognition of a touching ball.

The pockets are large, although that does not mean you will find it particularly easy to build large breaks. Positioning of the cursor can be done by keyboard or joystick, and there is an acceleration factor so that one can make fine adjustments without taking ages to move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other.

Chris Bourne

ANOTHER ladders and levels game you cry, as you aim Lode Runner at the dustbin ready for the drop.

But, however, there is something extra which makes the game different from the rest. Once you have run up the ladders, swung from poles and picked up gold bricks while dropping the enemy into freshly dug holes, you can switch to Edit mode and change the positions of all moveable objects on any of the 150 screens. You can even switch levels around so that, for instance, level one could become level four at the touch of a key.

Redesigning a screen is as simple as moving a cursor. You first select the object which you want to deposit on the screen. It can be a gold bar, or even yourself. Moving the drop cursor and pressing the fire button will put it on to the new setup.

As for the rest of the game, you might just as well forget about it. The user definition is the most exciting aspect of it and anyone who can work their way through 150 screens of matchstick heroes deserves a prize for perseverance.

John Gilbert

MEET Ziggy - again - as he takes on the role of a metagalactic zookeeper. Having found the dread Scarthax is out to pull the plug on the universe, our hero is visiting Thallis, Planet of Exile. Here are assorted caged monsters who may prove some use against the great adversary.

Caverns measureless to man stretch out in screen after screen of graphics and poor Ziggy, bless his little backpack, has to go round getting the beasts and returning them to his module back at the entrance.

The reverse of the cassette contains the Guide itself which describes a variety of mainly unpleasant beasts such as the Pricklepuss.

Dedicated followers of Ziggy are bound to enjoy it and the tasks are complicated without being impossible. Those not so dedicated may find it all a yawn.

If you can't manage to get the animals back to your module you can always see how many screens you can get through. It numbs the brain after a while and should appeal strongly to ashen-faced arcade freaks.

Chris Bourne

DO YOU ever get that sinking feeling? Seven flights of flickering yellow ladder and a cold bath in a subterranean river should be enough to give you the shivers, and that is about all you will get from Pitfall II.

A gigantic playing area of straight tunnels and dead ends, peopled by fuzzy white bats, dwarf condors, and spermatozoic sea snakes awaits you, as you guide Pitfall Harry on his quest to rescue Rhonda, his niece.

Control is not easy, and when Harry reaches ladders and pits he falls at a frightening speed. You must keep holding the joystick to the right or left and watch him inch sideways as he plummets, hopefully avoiding bats and finding a safe ledge before he hits the bottom. There is clearly scope for strategy here, but there is so little you can do to avoid the nasties that the exercise will probably become boring long before the problem is solved.

Chris Bourne

THE STORY so far ... an icy chill has crept into the hearts of the people of Midnight. It emanates from the black towers of Icemark, domain of Shareth the Heartstealer, daughter of Doomdark and captor of Morkin, son of Luxor the Moonprince.

Luxor, with his hundred-fold army, has once again to fight the dread might of Doomdark's wizardry. He passes through the gate of Varenorn, opened by Rorthron the Wise, into the desolation of the chilled lands of Icemark in search of his kin.

To the north-west lies the kingdom of the Giants, to the east the Dwarfs and to the south the barbarian lords and the Fey, faithful to Luxor's cause.

In the north-east lies Shareth whose reason for revenge is personal. She wanted to murder her father and claim his power but Luxor got there first.

At the start of the game Luxor can control the other characters, which include Tarithel, the author's token woman and Morkin's betrothed. Each character moves through the landscape fighting enemies and building armies as in Lords of Midnight. Not much more can be said about the plot of the game but the technical excellence with which it is programmed makes it a cut above its predecessor.

You can find more than 128 characters while roaming through the beautifully drawn landscapes. Those may turn out to be friends, treacherous friends, or enemies. Be wary of your loyal subjects - their hearts may have been stolen by Shareth.

In the Lords of Midnight one criticism of the game was that you could not enter the citadels and other buildings. In Doomdark's Revenge you can. At first the darkness, illuminated by well animated guttering torches, is sufficiently different to make underground travel interesting but when you have been through several of those passages you may decide to stay above ground no matter what the dangers. The author hopes to give more variety to interiors in the finale of the trilogy but, until then, you will have to put up with danger in the dark.

One of the major differences in Doomdark's Revenge again concerns characters. When you call up a character you can see their emotional make-up, loyalty and state of mind. If they are tired they will not move.

The speed of the program is impressive. The period between the fall of night and dawn has been shortened and the speed at which the graphics are drawn seems to have miraculously grown.

The combination of strategy and adventure which the game provides surpasses everything that has gone before in both markets, and that summing up includes even Lords of Midnight. The author has yet again hit upon a winning combination in a game which should take its place in computer history in record time.

John Gilbert

COLOURFUL scenes and excellent graphics ensure that Potty Percy is not just another flying pigeon pie in the sky.

Potty Pigeon is a proud papa, but his hungry young brood keep him busy searching for food. There are 11 locations where Percy will find big juicy wriggling worms. His baby feeding missions are hampered by lots of nasties determined to stop Percy including a big fat spider who swings from the tree where the chicks are nesting, a red bird that will steal the worms from Percy, giant killer Venus snapdragons, speeding traffic, helicopters and many more. Percy is also in constant danger of flying out of energy, which can only be replenished by resting on the ground or eating the mayflies.

Percy is no ordinary pigeon. He can perform counter-attack raids on the enemy by dropping deadly exploding eggs, which will score him points.

Progress is slower on the first level, but percy vere! There are a total of five levels and as you score points you will move into the higher levels, of which there are five.

The game is a delight to play. Although not as graphically complex as other games it will hold your interest with its gentle addictive quality. Beware though, this game is not for crawlers.

Colette McDermott

ACCORDING to the instructions, the purpose in Waydor is simply to collect a set of treasures and return them to their proper place. The game is set in a fairly undefined world of villages, castles and rolling hills and there are the obligatory underground labyrinths. A few monsters are thrown in for good measure.

The game uses location graphics, which add little to the 'plot' and you are constantly treated to a redrawing of the picture if you enter Look.

The lack of any story line means that it is difficult to feel involved in the proceedings and there is little sense of playing a role. Mechanically searching, examining and moving is all very well but the process tends to come fairly automatically to most experienced adventurers. If you are to feel part of a world and a process of discovery you will expect to get detailed description and scene setting. Don't look to Waydor for this.

Richard Price

You may need a fork-lift truck to carry away Legend from Century Software. The game comes in a vast video style box containing a thick novel, a map, keyboard overlay and the cassette.

The program is in two parts. The first is an adventure game which is mainly menu driven with a graphic combat sequence in real time - nearly, anyway. Your role is that of Rek the Reluctant and your task is to search the land of Drenai for warriors to defend the inhabitants against the relentless and terrible Nadir hordes. On your way you must also solve a number of sub-quests.

There is very little text input as most options are chosen by single keypresses.

The second part of the game depicts the siege of Dros Delnoch, where you have taken the warriors you recruited in the first half. That section is a graphics strategy game and some rather spindly soldiers are shown against a backdrop of battlements.

The combat sequence adds little to the game and is mainly a matter of reflex - a warrior is shown flailing his sword around and when it stops you must choose from different types of thrust. The siege may well appeal to strategy fans but can easily become tedious after a time and could not be called addictive.

Richard Price

SURVIVORS of the 60s will remember the excitement generated by the first showing of The Prisoner.

The recent rerun of the series has recruited new worshippers for an already popular cult and it's no surprise that there is now a computer adventure based on the show.

The game is set in the strange village where the inhabitants are known only by their numbers. Naturally enough you take on the role of Number 6 and former spy. Should you try to escape by building a boat? All the materials are there. Should you try to fathom the dark secret behind the village?

Enigmas sprout like mushrooms and you may find it difficult to grasp some of them if you have never seen the films. Some knowledge of the chaotic plot will certainly be to your advantage.

The program is written with the Quill but uses some graphics for the locations and this brightens the presentation considerably. Response time is fast but there seemed to be far too many 'I can'ts' in the replies and an unnecessarily limited vocabulary - a bottle of whisky could not be reached by entering 'get bottle', only by using 'whisky'. It is available from Spoof, Manchester.

Richard Price

DOES my partner love me? What can I do to put things right? Those are some of the questions answered in The Love Oracle and they do not refer to the relationship you have with your computer.

The package contains a book and a program. The book is based upon the Chinese oracle, the I Ching, devised by the ancient Chinese sages to answer questions on any conceivable subject. This new version devotes itself entirely to the love oracle of friendship, love and marriage.

While the book is packed with interesting and complex hexagrams, together with detailed instructions, the program contains only a limited version of what is in the book.

Having loaded the program you move straight on to throwing your coins, which the program is happy to do for you. There are no instructions to explain what is happening, making the book essential reading.

The program now tells you the title of the hexagram(s) you have drawn. For the first you read only the lines, for the second you consult any, or all, of the eight questions. By pressing whichever key you are instructed to for the lines, an answer will appear.

With the hexagram Dynamism, the line drawn read 'Find help to change yourself'. The book goes into detail with an answer over six times as long.

All the questions and replies in the program are brief in comparison with the book. When you consider that the book alone is half the price of the program it does not seem to be very good value, but there again if you 'believe' then you will probably want to have it for your collection.

Colette McDermott

HAVOC may well have been wonderful on the CBM 64 but the Spectrum version, far from being stunningly realistic as advertised, is just stunningly shoddy.

The game takes the Zaxxon format and you must pilot your intercepter over walls and through groups of pillars and other obstacles. The aim is to shoot down incoming cruise missiles and get fuel along the way by blowing tip fuel dumps.

Given the current state of the art the graphics are dreadful - there is little use of colour and the scrolling landscape flickers and jerks along. The plane and the missiles look more like doodles and become almost invisible when they pass across bits of skyscraper in similar shades. There is no detail in the general design and the whole program has the air of a rushed job.

Dynavision should wake up and realise that Spectrum owners now expect a lot more for their money and won't be palmed off with this abysmal rehash of a famous game. Serve with chestnut stuffing and cranberry sauce.

Richard Price

PROJECT X casts you as a scientist doing experiments in miniaturisation. As you work there is a blinding flash and a burst of powerful radiation. You already know what effect that dose of rays will have and you rush to the car hoping that you can reach your friend's house a few miles away. As a fellow researcher he should be able to save you. The car crashes.

When you wake you have shrunk and the journey becomes a test of endurance, full of threats to your survival. Small creatures have become vast predators and haystacks intricate warrens of passage ways. A button becomes a shield, a needle a sword.

The game is a Quilled text adventure - it looks as if there is no credit for Gilsoft but play for a little while and they get their mention. It is a friendly game with some useful abbreviations over and above the usual Quill set and small graphic characters for objects. The programmers have taken care over their presentation and not slavishly followed the utility's layout.

Project X is a real change from goblin-bashing scenarios, showing originality in its plot and care in its design. It may not be one of the all time greats but you'll find it aggravatingly entertaining. Available by mail order from Compass Software, Norwich.

Richard Price

BY ANYONE'S reckoning £1.75 is a good price to pay for a text adventure provided there has been no skimping on quality. 8th Day Software have introduced a suite of six games at that price, all written with the Quill.

The programs are graded from beginners standard to advanced difficulty and cover a range of subjects from science fiction to thrillers. It would have been useful to be able to look at the full set but regrettably only two of the games would load and only then after persistent attempts.

The two that loaded are quite adequate adventures. Faerie is set in a magical world of demons, eccentric wizards and changeling children. The game is of the advanced type and progress can only be made after a solid bout of clear lateral thinking. Both the setting and the puzzles are imaginative and intricate and you can expect long hours of perplexed entertainment from it.

Ice Station Zero, a beginner's adventure, is loosely based on the plot of a film with a similar title. A mad terrorist has taken over a polar research station and you must cross the lethal ice-pack to reach the installation before the maniac destroys New York. It may well be for beginners but it certainly is not a doddle by any means.

Richard Price

ONCE upon a time there was a game called Jack and the Beanstalk, which for some unaccountable reason got into the Top Ten charts.

Flushed with the sudden irrational tolerance of an otherwise critical market, Thor has released the inevitable follow-up, Giant's Revenge, in which Jack the yellow blob descends into the earth for more treasure.

One mistake on his narrow route and Jack's a dead blob. That is perhaps the most annoying aspect of the game. Not only must you discover how to collect the object at the end of each screen but you must also discover the correct route, pixel by pixel, regardless of where obstacles are placed. Sometimes you can walk straight through stalagmites or monsters. Sometimes they zap you before you even touch them.

Chris Bourne