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Will Dandy steal the honours from Gauntlet? That's the question on everyone's lips. Well, it's certainly won in the release date stakes. We've only seen previews of the Spectrum Gauntlet so far.

Dandy was the brainchild of John H. Palevich, who sold his idea for a Dungeon and Dragons style multi-player adventure game to Atari who turned it into Gauntlet. The rest is history...

Electric Dreams got the rights to the original Dandy game and turned it over to the Ram Jam Corporation who created the computer version you see before you.

It doesn't have the eight-way scrolling of Gauntlet - you simply "flip" from screen to screen. But you do get a two player option, hundreds of baddies to wipe out, treasure galore, weird spells and lots to eat! You can either play the part of Sheba, "240 lbs of screaming bloodlust", or Thor, "one Norwegian mother". The blurb doesn't tell you whether he's a one parent family or a mother of quads. I, for one, think we should be told...

Meanwhile back at the game you find yourself in a typical series of Gauntlet style dungeons. You're looking down on the carnage from above. The dungeons are baffling mazes with doors which can only be opened with keys you find dotted around - along with treasure, spells and food. Food keeps your energy level up, spells can be used to paralyse, disorientate or simply kill your enemies in smart bomb style.

Enemies come in the form of horrible spiders, demons and generally horrible nasties. They literally infest the dungeons and keep on coming unless you wipe out the monster generators by some heavy use of the fire button.

The basic idea is to collect all the treasure in each dungeon and get out alive. Successfully complete a set of dungeons and you get a clue which will help you solve the ultimate riddle.

You get a clue from all three dungeon "loads". You can play the three sets of dungeons in sequence or at random - but you'll need all the clues to discover the final solution.

The key to the game is staying alive. After all, if you're fighting fit you'll be able to cope with finding a way to the various exits, won't you?

You can swap treasure for energy if you're running low.

Spells are cast randomly by hitting the appropriate key. There's no telling what they'll do. In fact it's hard to tell what they are doing unless you're lucky enough to hit a "kill" spell. Then everything gets zapped. Shame you can't choose which spells to use.

The graphics are extremely attractive, although the little black characters you control are sometimes difficult to see - especially when you're teleporting about from room to room. The rest of the dungeon looks suitably solid and great attention to detail makes it a great game. Lots of nice shading and great use of colour.

Probably the best looking Spectrum game around at the moment together with Light Force. Dandy is very playable and very addictive - especially with two players. You'll find yourself hacking and chopping your way through dungeon after dungeon deep into the night! But I've got a feeling that most of you will be waiting for the real thing...

Dandy is on the way for the C64 and Amstrad.

Watch out for our special Dandy map next issue!