Any excuse for a compilation, the Codies, this time it's cartoons (and with no known cartoon characters in sight). There are the usual four games and with fairly distinctive styles. Are they any good? Well, let's see...

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It's a hard life being a wizard. Everyone's out to get you. From ogres to fairies, they all want you dead. None of this Paul Daniels business, with fluffy rabbits and dodgy card tricks. Oh no, you have to deal with lightning bolts and Guardian Skulls...

So put on your special magic trousers and prepare yourself for a mysterious journey into the darkest realms of the enchanted kingdom... Wiz Willy seems to have no particular mission in life, other than to kill monsters and leap platforms in this horizontally scrolling romp-o-rama.

The game starts off in a platform and beastie infested landscape. Wizard Willy can leap tall buildings in a single bound (well, tree stumps anyway) and fire bolts of lightning from his limited supply. (These lightning bolts can be replenished with pick-ups you discover along the way.)

There's lots more to pick up as you leap through the levels, including extra energy, free lives and bonus points. Perhaps the most useful pick-up of them all is the Vanish Spell. This is quite simply a smart bomb which kills all the monsters in the immediate vicinity - very useful when the screen is getting a little crowded.

The best feature of Wizard Willy is the stupendous attention to detail. The graphics are superb - fairly unusual for a budget game. They absolutely reek of colour and professional design. The characters in the game all have a personality of their own and this adds tremendously to the game's appeal. The sound is fine, with a dreamy tune playing throughout.

Wizard Willy plays brilliantly and has enough in it to keep you occupied for ages. A little gem.

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Little Puff is a dragon. Not the massive fire-breathing, village-destroying, virgin-eating son of Satan that you would expect, though. No, Little Puff is a cute and mostly harmless dragon. He's small, green and more than a little cuddly.

The poor little mite is lost and he wants to find his way home to Dragonland. To do this, he will have to collect four passes. These allow dragons entry to the security-tight land of fire-breathers. (You might expect that they'd let a dragon in on the strength of his appearance, but apparently not.)

The passes are scattered amongst a maze of screens and Puff has to negotiate platforms and puzzles to reach them. On the way, he can collect a number of things. The first and most important of these is a potion which will allow Puff to breathe fire. This fire can be used as a weapon or a device to solve certain puzzles. The puzzles are tricky in the arcade sense, but quite easy to figure out logically.

The game itself plays a little like the Dizzy series, with similar logic puzzles throughout. For example, when you find an inflated lifebelt, you then have to look for a pump to inflate the darned thing.

The graphics are fine. Not spectacular, but more than adequate for the job in hand. They convey the action and characters very well and suit the game nicely. A dream to play and suits players of all ages.

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Frankenstein Junior is a very odd little game. It features a style of play you probably haven't seen since the days of Atic Atac and Sabre Wulf. The game is a kind of wander around, explore, collect, avoid monsters, collect keys type of thing. There are no platforms, no shooting and no scrolling.

If this doesn't spook you completely, then the plot will. You are the son of Frankenstein's monster and your dad has gone to pieces... literally! You have to find his various body parts and put them together so that your Pop can once more terrorise the local village inhabitants.

The game is viewed from a very unusual perspective, it's sort of isometric, but not quite right. As you rush madly around the screen, you will be chased by a number of different kinds of beastie. When these touch you, your heart rate increases until you drop dead.

There are doors in every room, each of which requires a key of a certain colour. Finding the keys you need is a tricky business, as they are often hidden in the garish scenery. The pace is frantic and you spend most of your time being tailed by ghosts and monsters.

The graphics are nothing special and the sound is fairly uneventful too. The gameplay is ridiculously simple and often boring. A mediocre little addition to this otherwise fine compilation.

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Olli and Lisa are in a bit of a fix. They want to build a car, but all of the parts have gone missing. The parts are scattered round a gloomy old castle and are, to begin with, invisible. You control Olli as he bounces his royal cuteness around the various platforms and ledges of the castle.

To find the parts, you first have to be able to see them. To do this, you will need a magnifying glass. This shows up the car parts whenever you happen to be in a screen which contains one. That part of the quest is easy enough, but finding the necessary tools and the location of the car chassis is another matter entirely. Olli can jump around the platforms with the greatest of ease and most platforms can be reached with the aid of a ladder or steps.

The graphics portraying all this action are beautifully ornate and well animated to say the least. It is unfortunately a bit of a Spectrum port, but then you can't have everything, can you? Olli & Lisa plays brilliantly and is an absolutely huge game. The only real problem is with the control method. It can be a bit fiddly to make Olli do what you want, but practice makes perfect and you'll soon get used to it. Easily the best game on the compilation.

Overall 88%
Superb value and a highly entertaining collection of games.