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"Once upon a time, when the moon was still red, there lived a magician. He, or she, for you can never be quite sure when sorcery is involved, was not the best magician in the world. But it was already the age of failing powers, when simple spells worked best. This is the tale of how that magician kept Magik alive."

Another near classic storyline has been manipulated and turned into an excellent adventure by the Level 9 crew.

This adventure concerns a time when Magik was still rife in the world, a time when the moon was red and filled the plains of earth with a mystical radiance.

Unfortunately, the moon has since lost its splendour, and Magik had faded from the earth. A few magicians, though, constructed the Moon Crystal, which radiates Magik all around Baskalos, but it has been stolen and it is your task to find it and replace it in its cradle in the Moon Tower.

The use of Magik is necessary to complete various parts of the game, and you are thus equipped with a number of spells, and a list of their functions.

For example, to use the FIND spell you need a lamp, or the Magik has no point to focus.

It is well known that iron prevents the use of Magik, and this point has not been overlooked either.

The adventure hots up when you find yourself inside a cave system which leads inside an abandoned castle. As you enter the pothole, somethiing hisses SATARH and, going down to investigate, I found myself face to face with giants, the wizard Diix (who is quite a coward) and an enormous rat.

As with all the latest Level 9 adventures, this one contains graphics for all locations and, considering there are over 200 locations, that makes for a lot of pictures!

With so many of them you might expect the text to be somewhat limited, but it is more than adequate. The quality of the graphics is fairly high, too, although they do tend to become somewhat repetitive.

This game must rate as the best adventure I have played this year. It is streets ahead of Level 9's previous games, and they are good enough! I can't wait to see what they will produce when they start writing games for disk users!