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Knight Tyme is the third in the Magic Knight series from Mastertronic's incredibly inexpensive MAD range of games at the extraordinarily low price of £3(ish).

The game features the same 'windimation' that did Spellbound - Knight Tyme's predecessor - with pop-down menus to give your character adventure-type commands by using the joystick and selecting from lists as you go.

The list of commands as you would have typed them appears on the status line as you do it. So to examine an object you would pop out the first menu with the main list of commands on it. You could then select 'pick up an object'. This would then pick up the object and return you to the action. If no object was near enough, then it will tell you.

Selecting the main menu again, then 'examine' will throw up a list of whatever you are carrying. Select from these to pick your object - quicker than typing it in for a slow typist.

Whilst you may think that this is a bit long-winded, you soon get used to it. As well as this adventuring element - and it is adventuring, the only difference is that you don't have to grope about in a Thesauraus for the right words to switch on a light - it is a flick-screen game with the magic knight bouncing around the screen like a demented space hopper. Other characters can come and go whilst everything else is happening and you can use the adventure system to talk to them and give or lose objects.

The other aspects of the gameplay are just too complex to discuss and have been gone into in some detail in previous issues of Computer Gamer. The game takes place on a space cruiser in the distant future and it is your job to find a way to return to your own space and time - no easy task.

The conversion to the Amstrad has been very good and the standard of graphics is excellent with lots of detail and colour switching used in mode 1 to give the game a little more sparkle and life than games with the usual four colours.

To conclude, if you haven't got this game then buy it. At £3 you can't go far wrong even if you just use it to stop the fridge from wobbling.