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I've chosen to review these together as they are written using the same programming techniques, use the same screen format, come from the same publisher - and are the same price!

Peter Gerrard's book, reviewed recently in HCW, gives all the programming details. The programs are all Basic, using a combination of colours and windows in Mode 1. There are no pictures - only text - but to my mind, this is an advantage if the descriptions are good. The Basic is fast enough, though the interpretation of your input is crude. Verb-noun is about the limit, and you can ask to examine an object described only to be told it isn't there!

Loading is odd too. Instead of saving the program with suppressed filenames, thus allowing uninterrupted loading, two of these require you to stay with your machine, and press Play at various points, so goodbye tea-making. Even stranger, Colossal Cave Adventure has no save game facility at all, so you start from the beginning each time you play; distinctly odd!

I must admit to not being an adventure fanatic. The idea of sitting down to map the product of someone else's imagination bores me to tears. But I do appreciate inventiveness and humour. This is Castle Dracula's strongpoint. It's the terrible "So you fancy yourself as a great adventurer type, do you?" flavour. Your computer eyes and ears in the castle also wears a hearing aid on occasions, which is no great help. Your aim is to light-heartedly offer his Countliness a rare stake. This appealled to me, and is quite hard enough for someone starting out on adventuring. Fun!

Mountain Palace Adventure shows a little more style after it's laoded, reminiscent of the early magazine listing displays of the Spectrum, filling the screen with words and flashing colours. The adventure is OK but rather ordinary, on occasions, seeing the same descriptions gets rather tedious after a while. It didn't tempt me to probe the ultimate depths - even for the promise of vast wealth.

Colossal Cave is based on the original all-text adventure. I love this game, and have spent weeks on it on another micro; its layout, language and plot are very compelling. Coming to this implementation I was rather disappointed. All the original locations are there, and the solutions, objects and treasures are consistent, but the descriptions seem to be lacking something. A little magic has gone. For me though, this is the adventure. It calls for great ingenuity and patience.

To sum up, a varied bunch of strengths, the same weaknesses. Mountain Palace for starters, Drac for humourists, Col-Cave for a real challenge. Very ordinary presentation, some programming oddities, and a rather excessive price tag.

D.M.