Fast And Ultimate

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Question: how do you make a BBC micro version of a Spectrum game twice as hard as the original? Answer: you make it go twice as fast, of course!

And Atic Atac on the Beeb certainly goes. It's set in a multi-level castle, where your objective is to retrieve all the pieces of the front door key to enable you to escape.

Careful timing revealed that to cross one of the many rooms on each level of the castle takes just 1.2 seconds!

Your character, which you may choose to be a knight, serf or wizard, faces many hazards along the way. I was pleased to see that the full range of ghouls, mummies and other members of the not-very-nice-really club have been brought over to the BBC Micro. The graphics are superb although the use of colours seems to be restricted to the Spectrum's capabilities and not the Beeb's.

Atic Atac has many of the nice touches that turn a good game into a bestseller. These include a marvellous "energy left" display in the form of a roast chicken being slowly eaten away, and an echoing fanfare at the start of each game - enough to give any Spectrum within listening distance a permanent inferiority complex.

Another quaint feature is that a gravestone is erected whenever you lose a life, to remind you of your past mistakes.

Sadly, this splendid game is not entirely bug-free. On more than one occasion I found myself trapped by a closing door and totally unable to defend myself. But this was the only fault I came across during many hours of playing, and is not as fatal as many I have seen in other best-selling games.

If you can handle the speed of this game then I would highly recommend it. I'm still not sure just how Ultimate managed to cram so much into a Beeb's memory but I sincerely hope that they will continue to do so in future games. Triff!

David Acton