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Frankie is not so much a game as a compendium of games united by a single aim. The idea is to progress from Mundanesville through to the Pleasure Dome increasing your personality to maximum as you do so. Along the way there are puzzles to solve and action screens to be overcome, each with its own reward. Most of the games inter-relate and objects gained in one can be essential keys to another.

The superb graphics place you in the streets of Mundanesville and you must enter each house in turn searching and touching objects as you go. If any objects looks useful then it may be carried with you but you can only carry a limited number so the choice must be made carefully. Using video cassettes or touching pictures can allow you to enter the action screens, once you learn how (I'm not telling!). There are 10 action screens in all and objects found in the houses usually enhance your chances of success.

At one point you discover that a murder has been committed and it is your task to deduce who the murderer was from clues which may be collected in the houses. This had me running for a pencil and paper because there are about a dozen suspects and it is impossible to keep track of all the clues. Solving the murder rewards you with more personality points, but what are these all important factors?

Personality is divided into four elements (pleasure, war, love and faith) represented by four columns at the side of the screen. As you complete each game the columns increase in height and Frankie gives you occasional reports on the percentage of your full personality which the total of the columns represents.

The ZTT Room has a large screen and a set of buttons pressing the buttons lights up a different part of the screen or turns it off again. Success is achieved by lighting up all of the ZTT symbol. The Sea of Holes is inspired by the Frankie symbol from which the hero character of the game was derived. As you disappear into one hole you reappear from another. If you reappear on the base line of the screen you are rewarded with a chance to enter another action screen. I think you will see by now that the screens are varied, all use superb graphics and there have been no bytes spared to produce this game.

There is even a maze which can be mapped by noting the colour of the manholes which are found there. These are the Corridors of Power in the Pleasure Dome itself and when your personality is complete the door to the final screen will be revealed here. The final screen? The title screen itself. Such is the elyptical nature of this game.

My only criticism of this game is the computerised version of Relax which plays while the program loads. It sounds awful. Don't worry though, there is a free live recording of Frankie doing the same song on a separate tape in the box. Take my advice, stick that on the hi-fi and turn the sound down on your TV during loading and remember Frankie says buy this and you'll have Oceans of fun.

E.D.