This is another of those small pocket books that Virgin seem to churn out in such large numbers. Still, at least they *are* still churnng out the books for us, which is more than a lot of publishers are doing these days. New books for gamers are becoming increasingly hard to find on the shelves.

This book contains six programs for typing in, all adventures. They are: The Explorer, The Patriarch, 3D Maze, Into The Unknown, Gotham Runner and Gold Nugget.

Unfortunately, the ideas are not very original. We have all wandered around the countryside looking for our princess (though personally I'd rather have a prince) and we have all spent ages trying to get out of mazes or around fairytale lands before. In fact, in The Patriarch the authors actually say, "As many adventure cliches as possible have been squeezed into this program" - an idea which is okay for one or two games I'd say, but not the whole book.

In the third game, 3-D Maze, you are charged with the task of finding the Magic Philosopher's Stone that will change any base metal into gold but which has been cunningly hidden in a maze. The next game, Into The Unknown, makes use of the randomising function on the Amstrad by creating a fairytale landscape that will never be the same two games running. This time, you have to find ten pieces of silver beore you reach the Citadel. And so it goes.

The print is nice and dark, so you shouldn't have too much trouble keying in, although I thought the instructions could have been a bit fuller. Still, it's only £2.99 and not too bad a book for beginners.