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This is essentially an icon-driven game for really young adventurers controlled purely by use of the space bar and RETURN keys.

A picture of the scene is displayed, and below it, one of a list of options is shown in highlight. The options are LOOK, TALK, SEARCH, GET, LIST and LEAVE. Hitting the space bar moves the highlight on to the next option.

If you select something that has more than one alternative, for example LEAVE, then a box highlights one of the exits. Tapping the space bar moves the box to another exit.

LIST is a pictorial inventory, and is displayed on a separate graphics screen, with choices to QUIT the list, DROP an object, or USE an object, all controlled in the same way as before.

Thus, it is a very simple game for youngsters to operate, but will it entertain them?

You start off with the opportunity to take a chicken and a key, and by moving, progress to a hospital, where a doctor is about to strap you into a nasty looking electrical machine. Eventually, you escape, and find yourself on the yellow brick road.

The graphics are pretty lousy. On the Amstrad version that I played, there seemed to be too much white, which made the highlighted boxes difficult to distinguish.

The yellow brick road is presented in an unforgiveable white, and seems to loop endlessly between an empty location, and one with some winged evil eyes. In this, and some other locations, you seem to be trapped, until suddenly, for no apparent reason, the LEAVE icon becomes available.

Altogether I found the game baffling - I just didn't know what was going on, nor what I was doing wrong.

My wife, a primary school teacher, played Return To Oz extensively, and came to the conclusion that young kiddies, at whom it is targeted, would soon become hopelessly bored by it. Not recommended for the Christmas stocking.