Al-Strad is the flagship of Mark Eltringham's new company. Recreation Re-created. Originally released way back in 1985 and reviewed in AA6, Al-Strad has dated little and is still very impressive.

Al-Strad was written by Paul Gill using BASIC and is text-only. However, the character set has been redefined and the screen is well laid out into three separate windows - the upper one with location descriptions and the lower two containing typed input and score respectively.

Al-Strad is continuing the royalty theme of this month's reviews (Are royal families in vogue all of a sudden?) This time a Princess, Sally Software, has been kidnapped from the land of Kilobyte and you decide to attempt to rescue her.

Input is basic, just one or two-word sentences, but it is sufficient for the game. The real beauty of the game is its humour and also its puzzles. The puzzles are so logical and well thought out that the game is very enjoyable to play. Even if you get stuck, the game has a superb help system to aid you. The humour in places is a bit dated - references are made to Addictive and Mastertronic - but other parts are still funny today.

What really makes a game good, however, are those little touches which add so much to the atmosphere. Al-Strad has many of these, the best one being when you get very drunk by the river and all the location descriptions change to that read by someone in an alcohol-induced state.

Some spelling mistakes lurk in the game ("enterance" and "suttle"!) but they cannot take away the charm of Al-Strad. An amusing game which is well worth buying.