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This game comes from what might be termed the 'Golden Age' of Electron computing. In the middle of the 1980's, the Sinclair Spectrum was the undisputed king with the Amstrad and Commodore 64 battling it out for second place. The major publishers of the time - Ocean, US Gold, Hewson and the like - were concentrating on these three machines. The Electron was, by and large, ignored. Although it was clearly a successful machine, producing a version of the latest 'must have' game was just not worth the "risk" that not enough people would buy an Electron version of it.

In my youth it was infuriating to see dodgy monochrome versions of Ghostbusters 2 and Midnight Resistance on the Spectrum when it was clear the Electron would be capable of much better, full colour versions. But, historically it was by no means a bad thing. Software companies such as Superior Software capitalised on the smaller Electron market and, whilst they did offer some conversions of games successful on other machines, they came up with wholly new ideas exactly like this one.

Palace Of Magic is a sophisticated flick-screen graphic adventure in which you play a dwarf banished to the palace (of magic), having been a bit cheeky to one of your elders. As punishment you're now tasked with running around the palace, picking things up in one place and then using them in another. You can carry two objects at a time and there are ropes which hang around the rooms allowing you to climb and descend from floor to floor. You can go down into the basements, up onto the roofs and left/right through the castle grounds. If you find an object you can pick it up by pressing Space and to avoid a patrolling nasty you can jump by pressing Return. The other game controls are the standard ZX*? ones.

The game gets a lot of things right. There's the almost-obligatory locked doors that bar progress, and the keys that fit them. But there's also a number of more varied items to find and use - a coiled rope, for example, needs to be placed in one of the towers to allow you to clamber up it and if you descend into one room the entire screen goes black. Has the game crashed? No, you need to be carrying a candle to see down there. Note too that you shouldn't pronounce Palace Of Magic humdrum and give up too soon, because the uses of the most fascinating items are only revealed when you've almost completed the entire quest.

As with all graphic adventures of this type, there's a fair deal of exploration involved. The castle and its environs are reasonably big and you may well have to make a map just to assist you in remembering where the items you need actually are. Unlike modern games, it doesn't restrict you to a small area and a limited set of puzzles to begin with; from the get-go you can visit almost half of the rooms. It's only those dreaded "portcullis"-style doors that impede your progress!

Your dwarfman has an energy level which is shown top-right. You lose energy when you collide with the roaming nasties or crossed swords that litter the palace; however, scattered throughout the palace are top hats which, as their name suggests, will "top 'at up" again. (I'll get my coat.) The big danger to your energy level comes in the form of being reckless - you can make it through almost every screen without losing a single energy point if you really try, but crossing and re-crossing the same screens time after time means that you quickly look for short cuts or take chances. If your energy is dropping dramatically, the screen flashes red and transports you back to the position you were in when you entered the room. This is a really nice touch which will save your bacon on many an occasion.

As far as a critical appraisal goes, the first drawback to the game is its lack of sound. The second is that, if you can't work out what's needed in a particular location, it can become a bit exasperating trying to work it out. A trophy, for example, if placed in a room chock full of bad guys, makes them all immediately disappear. Yet there is no clue that that is its purpose. Heck, the game doesn't even confirm (in text) that it is a trophy, it could just as easily be a toy soldier for all anyone knows.

However, everything else about Palace Of Magic is, well, perhaps not magic but certainly very good. Reviews were universally positive, with many reviewers drawing a (somewhat natural) conclusion that it was very like Citadel, another famous Electron graphic adventure.

Having aged quite well and having been a leading light in the Electron's catalogue, released when a very large number of people still owned one, you're spoiled for choice if you want to get a physical version of Palace Of Magic. It was available on tape, both big-box and budget (courtesy of Blue Ribbon), on 3.5" and 5.25" disc (both versions now super-desirable) and was also included on Superior's Play It Again Sam 3 compilation. Expect to pay around £2 each for the tapes and minimum £40 for each of the discs.