MAGIC is in the air as the hero of Finders Keepers reappears to help his tutor Gimbal the wizard.

The old grump has been using spells to spice up his rice but, because of an error in translation, a spell goes wrong. Gimbal is whisked off to the Castle of Karn, dragging seven other reluctants with him. Before his power is lost he manages to send a message to you, the Magic Knight, and you are off on another mission of mercy.

The knight is moved around the castle with joystick or keyboard in a similar way to the hero in Ultimate's Underwurlde. A series of easy to use command windows can be accessed to pick up or examine objects and order other characters around. The menus are easy to use and beat the old method of typing commands, word for word, onto the keyboard.

If you are using a joystick you can slide a pointing finger icon up and down the list of options and press the fire button to select. The game movement keys will do the same job if you don't have a joystick.

Movement between the five floors, basement and roof of the castle is achieved by teleport pad or lift. The teleport can be placed anywhere and, as long as you have the key, you can zap back to the pad at any time.

The lift should call at all floors, including an exotic roof garden with weirdly shaped trees and big colourful blooms. Unfortunately, rather like Dr Who's police box, it malfunctions at the start of the game and will not go to the basement or ground floor. You have to solve a riddle to get it working again.

Many of the objects you pick up contain helpful riddles. Most solutions are found by matching objects with other characters.

The characters within the castle are not particularly intelligent but you must keep them happy and fed. If you help them they will help you.

Spellbound is the first in a series of graphic adventures from Mastertronic, and if the rest are as good as this one the company will set new standards for quality and value. The game blows many an expensive package out of the window and some big name software houses had better watch their backs.

AN ISLAND full of robot tanks? What do they do there? Who do they shoot at? You of course - since it's your job to destroy all the power generators on the island.

In order to do that you have a tank of your own - the Hell-Tek. It moves in eight directions and fires shells. If all that sounds suspiciously like one of those old tank attack games where you negotiate a maze of buildings while chasing your opponent, go to the top of the class. There are, however, a number of differences which make Panzadrome about the best tank game of that type we've ever seen.

The most important feature is that your tank isn't fully built at the start. You have to explore the landscape to collect tracks, mortars, mines, a special storm turret, and Polycrete - a substance which fills in craters.

It is most important to find the Polycrete first, as without it you can soon get boxed in - many routes in the city are only one tank in width, and if they get blocked, you'll never escape.

The graphics are very pleasing, although the only concession to 3D effects is a shadow from the walls of the city. It's an overhead view, and scrolls smoothly over 64 screens.

Combat with the robot tanks should be avoided in preference for finding safe routes - but your first task is to locate the factories where you can obtain extra parts. That is a very tough proposition indeed. We won't help you by explaining what a factory or generator looks like - that's something else you must discover.

That said, it's also very addictive - after a bit you can see how to achieve your goal but putting that plan into practice is a killer.

Panzadrome is Ariolasoft's first game designed specifically for the Spectrum by the Ramjam programming team - in the past the company has stuck to conversions of American originals which tended to suffer on the Sinclair machine. Panzadrome is a welcome sign of a change in policy, and well worth buying if you want a long-term challenge with plenty of violent action.

IT IS WITH due modesty that I can say that it was my series on Forth in Sinclair User which prompted John Baxter to write this tape-to-microdrive conversion program for addicts who want faster access to their language.

All you have to do is load in the Artic Forth package then type 1 LOAD and run in the converter. The converter will then do its job. First the cassette loads in a piece of code; then the microdrive saves the converted file. The process is repeated several times before the language has been saved for microdrive usage.

Following the conversion a series of three information screens are loaded. They describe Forth screen 99 which, when entered, provides eight new Forth words. Those include routines to back up screens, to list existing tape programs, to copy screens to microdrive and to erase screens.

The utility is a powerful addition to Artic Forth for a minority interest group. It shows that Forth is still alive on the Spectrum.

POOR CUTE CHICK is under threat of extinction from a giant dinosaur and you must save her.

Taking your favourite stone wheel you bounce across the prehistoric landscape jumping rocks and holes and ducking under trees. The next task is to cross the river via turtleback.

You will need the Dooky Bird for your next test - the lava pit. Cling on to its tail and you'll sail across.

The trail continues with more stones and holes. If you crash into obstacles the stone wheel will flip from under you and bash your brains out in true comic book style. When you eventually arrive at the cave where Cute is held prisoner your joystick hand will be at dropping point.

Although the title has little relevance to the game - other than the fact that it is the name of one of the US BC cartoons - and the graphics are nothing to write home about, BC has me hooked. I find his on-screen antics very addictive.

WHO THINKS of software names at Artic? Assemblage is a suite of four games and not a machine code utility.

Side one contains two arcade games, Harry Hare's Lair and Mutant Monty and the Temple of Doom.

Harry Hare's Lair has you playing the part of a rabbit after carrots. You make a wild dash through the tunnels of your lair, which are inhabited by deadly giant spiders and worms, to get to the carrots which have been planted at the top of the screen.

Mutant Monty and the Temple of Doom is another feeble, flickering, attempt by Artic to make a go of their cartoon hero. Monty runs rampant in true Manic Miner style, collecting as many valuables as possible without being relieved of his entrails on the local altar.

The Curse of the Seven Faces is a text-only adventure in which you must assemble the accoutrements of a wizard to become a magic user. The ever-present curse will be with you on your travels through the misty caverns, as will an evil wizard, who is bent on your destruction.

Robin Hood is a Quilled adventure with full screen graphics supplied by the Illustrator, also from Gilsoft. The graphics are drawn slowly, but they disappear when the description of a location appears. You play nature-loving Robin roaming around a forest full of interesting and unlikely locations.

The arcade games are not much cop and it would have been a crime to release them individually but, together with the adventures on the other side of the tape, they make a varied diet.

IT IS GOOD to know that in centuries to come the age-old skills of the shepherd with his faithful hound will still be of service to mankind. Mastertronic seems to think so, anyway, and One Man and his Droid is the result.

You have to capture ramboids, 'a male form of alien sheep' - ho, ho - and herd them into a teleport device with your droid. Why is not so clear. Never mind. The game falls into two parts, and it's really a maze game with plenty of strategic elements.

The first part involves making your way through hundreds of these metallic beasts to find an exit at the top of the screen. Mastertronic might as well have left that part out, since it's a bit of a chore and nothing like as much fun as the main game.

The second part shows a network of tunnels, in which roam eight different types of ramboid. A display shows the order in which they must be herded into the teleport - you must get four in the right order to progress to the next level.

The droid can fly, dig a hole to let ramboids pass over it, or just stay on the ground. There's a time limit which is generous but rapidly deteriorates for later levels if you don't move fast early on.

The graphics are much better than your average Mastertronic game, chunky and vaguely reminiscent of Boulder Dash. Indeed, the whole production is good, and represents excellent value for money at the budget price range.

Herding the ramboids is more a matter of organising their natural movement than just pushing and shoving - you'll have to work out the rules by which they move and then provide judicious obstacles to guide them into the teleport. At later levels that becomes more difficult, as lumps of masonry buzz about the corridors and get in the way.

Each level has a password, and once you've discovered it you can start play at that stage, which is a boon when each game takes at least 20 minutes to play - the initial time limit.

Mastertronic has dumped some pretty revolting stuff on the public in the past. One Man and His Droid is challenging, fun, and cleanly presented - budget software seems to be growing up.

HERE'S an interesting seasonal phenomena - the useless present of which the giver says, "It doesn't do much but it's nice, isn't it?"

When you have fumbled through the embarrassment of keying in the names of sender and victim a pretty display appears with a suitable Christmas sentiment.

Press any key and a snowy rooftop scene replaces the card's message. A reindeer-driven sleigh appears on the horizon, and swings in for a landing on a roof top. Santa hops out and jumps down the chimney. He lands in the living room, puts presents under the tree, drinks his hot toddy, hiccuping as he shoots up the chimney again.

The game on the flip side is no better and hasn't even got pretty graphics to promote it. You have a choice of spaceships with which you must blast a motley collection of aliens brought out of retirement from a Space Invader junk yard.

I am not given to using four letter words but this is a load of hype. But that won't stop you buying it. Go ahead, prove me wrong!

FOOTBALL is supposed to be a social game - so is smoking - but there is nothing very sociable about creating a database of soccer facts, and selling it as a quiz.

Rothmans Football Quick Quiz can be played by up to four teams or individuals. Topics include the FA Cup, The Scottish League Cup and Non-League Football.

There are three question formats within each quiz. Three-in-a-row gives each player a batch of three questions to answer. If one is answered wrongly, a bonus is thrown open to the other players. The race is a free for all buzzer round which uses the reply keys.

The quiz becomes tedious if you play it for more than half an hour at a time and even the most ardent soccer bibliophile is likely to give the package a free kick before long.

The package would probably not be a commercial success if it did not have the Rothmans name tagged to it. Spin-offs are justified in some instances, but is it laudable to link a cigarette manufacturer's name to a product which many 11 year olds may pick up?