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Abandoned in the eerie, haunted castle you can only escape by finding the Golden Key.

The castle consists of a large number of rooms, each of which has between one and three doors. As you walk across a room and through a door, the screen clears and the new location is drawn. The program runs very fast and there is no delay while the redrawing takes place.

The quality of the graphics in this game is the best I've seen from a Spectrum. Ultimate has dispensed with some of the movement and sound routines which were shared by Jet Pac and Cookie, and have written some excellent replacements.

Movement is smooth, and user-defined graphics are used to their limit to produce some amazing characters such as evil-looking witches complete with broomstick.

Control is via Kempston or AGF joysticks, or the four cursor keys. With four keys for direction, one to fire and one to pick up the objects, a joystick is really the only way to play.

As I said, the idea is to explore the rooms, collecting the objects and using them. For example, some doors may be locked and to open them you'll have to find the correct colour-coded key.

Scores are printed on a beautifully designed "parchment" scroll which runs down the right hand side of the screen. This shows the number of lives left, and also a large stuffed turkey! If you come into contact with any of the nasties, the turkey sheds some of its meat and gradually turns to a pile of bones. When all the meat's gone, you lose a life! Now that's novel.

Apart from the keyboard control, Atic Atac must rate as the best yet from Ultimate. It runs on a 48K Spectrum and is well worth the £5.50 which you'll have to pay.