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Pit Fiend starts well with synthesised title music playing melody and backing chords. For anyone with a Dragon who can only coax a variable beep out of your machine, Pit Fiend's music is quite impressive - a version of the Entertainer.

The game is rather similar to Maziacs by Bug Byte which found its way onto the ZX81 and the Spectrum. You are a character wandering around a five-level dungeon searching for pieces of a broken shield. Avoiding the Pit Fiends, you can go up or down various sets of stairs, visiting all the levels. If you get close to a Pit Fiend you can throw a knife at it, striking it down immediately. I found the accuracy of these weapons a little suspect. You appear to have an unlimited number of knives to lob at the ghouls.

You can choose the colour background. I found that good old green background with red, yellow and blue foreground colour mode was the only one that was truly playable, the other two being rather painful on the eyes.

The game is too easy to solve, it took me just two tries before I had collected all the pieces of the shield without my oxygen running out. On completing one shield, you start the game all over again.

In conclusion, a fair game, but not really exciting or variable enough to make it a worthwhile purchase even at this price.

C.G.