You'll be hooked

I think it was George Bernard Shawwho, as an illustration of the zaniness of English pronunciation and spelling, suggested that the wrtghoti could legitimately be pronounced as fish.

Certainly this latest offering for the Archimedes via Rainbird is zany enough to qualify for an accolade and is a further demonstration of the quality of Magnetic Scrolls adventures - their reputation is well deserved.

If, as I do, you have a rom expansion card fitted you'll have to *UNPLUG Podule before the adventure will load. The opening screen is a brilliant reproduction of the picture on the packaging and demonstrates again the Archimedes' superb graphics capability.

There are some suitably watery noises - you can't really call it music - as an accompaniment to the loading screen, interspersed with feline miaows -a threat of things to come.

I sat and listened while I studied the documentation which consists of a leaflet on how to look after your fish, a fish identification chart, an extremely funny booklet giving some useful - and not so useful - background information and, finally, a bus pass.

Apart from provoking responses ranging from a snigger to a full-blown belly laugh, the booklet has a number of uses. It indicates the type of input the parser will accept - and this is well up to present-day standards. Multiple commands and quite complex ones are accepted without trouble. It also has a section containing coded hints which are sometimes very useful and at others temperature-raising as they tease you about your lack of ability as an adventurer. Last, but by no means least, the booklet provides a copy protection medium for the program as well.

At various stages during play your boss will interrupt things and ask for a word from the booklet to be typed in before the game can proceed further. Three unsuccessful attempts mean that the program hangs up and the micro needs to be reset.

The screen is split between pictures and text and there are four mouse-operated pull-down folders just below the illustrations. These are clearly a standard Magnetic Scrolls procedure and provide various useful facilities under the headings files, text, goodies and specials.

The opening scenario is both amusing while at the same time setting a simple initial puzzle. You, an interdimensional espionage operative, are on vacation in anice cosy goldfish bowl - honest - when an enormous hand drops a tatty plastic castle on your head.

Stunned, you turn upside down and are thus unable to enter the aforesaid castle and receive your instructions from the boss - Rear-Admiral Sir Playfair Panchax - who doesn't like to be kept waiting. If you are unable to right yourself, the program eventually does it for you, though you lose the first 10 scoring points as a consequence.

One way or another you learn that the Seven Deadly Fins are at it again, even though you have just earned your rest by foiling the dastardly gang. This time they have stolen and dismantled a focus wheel and your job is to find the parts and so thwart the septic septet.

Within the castle three warps have materialised - doorways to danger, bafflement and a lot of laughter.

The text is not quite so discursive as that in Level 9 adventures, but it has the ability to convey atmosphere very powerfully and economically:

"As you enter the room you have a sudden vision: A girl dressed in white. A raised dagger. A scream. Altar room.

This icy room has been sealed for a long time. Cold air slices through you; a chill foreshadow of your doom. Terrifying images flash into your mind. You feel that you have violated this place somehow. There is an ancient altar here."

Vivid stuff - and the whole adventure is up to this standard of eloquence, whether it is attempting to chill the blood or tickle the ribs.

If you enter the smooth warp you arrive in a forest maze with different location descriptions. This type of maze is not particularly difficult to solve and is ideal for the kind of logical mapping technique that I favour.

There is a smithy to be found containing lots of useful items and, if you are quick, you can catch one of the Deadly Fins by surprise but you'll not follow his escape route. Things go with a bang in this area, and that's a major problem.

Entering the jagged warp lands you in the back of a van used by a ferociously bad hippie rock group whose roadie has gone off for some diesel.

The rubbish in the cab is illuminating and allows you to explore further and so make your way to a ruined abbey where the musicians are hard at work creating cacophony and where you'll also find the room with the chilling description quoted earlier.

If you decide to try the small warp you emerge into a recording studio, complete with florid faced producer fuming for coffee. Guess who could well spend time trying to make it - and the kitchen door is locked as well. There's the odd tip - or tape - to be picked up here and there, and there's a lot to be said for initiating your very own demarcation dispute. Just stay switched-on and out of the way and see what happens.

It is important to remember that Magnetic Scrolls adventures, like other first rank games, allow you to interact with the characters you meet. You can interrogate them, tell them things if you think it will help you and ask them to do things.

I am not quite sure whether to say that Fish is a program worthy of the Archimedes or that the Archimedes is worthy of a program like Fish. Either way, I think you'll see what I'm driving at. The box sports the slogan: One nibble and you're hooked. In this instance, it's not advertiser's hype.

FISH