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The village of Nightshade sounds a bit like Milton Keynes 'Skeletons with rotting flesh dripping with the blood of the long dead, waiting, prowling the now empty village for live prey'.

Why, oh, why do I have to go and lift the curse from the village! Can't the editor send me to the South of France instead?

Alright, I'm a brave adventurer and I'll take the challenge. Armed only with my trusty joystick, I entered the village. I didn't live long enough to regret it.

The graphics in this game must rate amongst the best ever seen on the MSX. Three-dimensional views of the village scroll past as the little hero wanders from location to location in his quest to free the smitten hamlet. Walls of building disappear as you walk behind them showing only the line of their course and revealing the horrors that roam the streets.

Strange hunchback demons and ethereal pagues plod their undead lives away in the search for human flesh, while flashfires spring up almost under your feet seeking to consume you with their burning tongues.

Entering some of the rooms reveals a new series of spectres which turn out to be spells; your only weapons against the evil which is running rife. Collect as many as you can and use your arsenal carefully. Different spells are effective against different enemies; use the wrong one and you end up with double trouble as the evil splits with amoeboid simplicity and satanic leers.

As your hero wanders, he finds strange balms and potions which have desirable effects. Some heal all wounds and restore strength while others give him extra speed to dodge the foes and collect more spells.

It's about time programmers took the MSX more seriously and Ultimate have gone to town (well, a village anyway!) on this one. The sound, graphics and gameplay are well thought out and executed and the controls can be keyboard or joystick in one of two different control modes. One control uses left and right to turn the little adventurer while back and forth move him. In the other mode, he moves in the directions the control points him.

For all newcomers to the world of MSX and old lags like me this will open up your eyes to new possibilities in programming. In fact, open-eyed is the only way to enter this graphic adventure.