Beyond have always been stronger on strategy/adventure than on arcade games (Do I hear Superman being mentioned anywhere?), and now, just to tide us all over while we're waiting for Dark Sceptre and Star Trek to arrive, they've gathered together four of their best-known titles together onto a compilation tape.

The games assembled here have all had their fair share of acclaim - Doomdark's Revenge, Shadowfire and Enigma Force, with only Sorderon's Shadow as a slightly less well-known game.

It seems almost pointless to rehash Doomdark's Revenge, especially as Mike Singleton's 'landscaping' technique caused such a fuss when it first appeared in Lords Of Midnight. But Doomdark took the technique even further, to produce a massive fantasy epic in which, playing the part of Prince Luxor and controlling various other characters and armies, you embark on a quest to free the land of Midnight from the threat of Shareth the Heartstealer. The game allows you to enter commands via single key entry (w=look, q=move) and the six thousand locations, 48,000 landscaped views and the various characters and objects that you have to deal with make for a vast and complex game that has been keeping hardened adventure addicts glued to their keyboards ever since it was first released.

A second tape in the package also includes a recording of a dramatised version of the story of Doomdark's Revenge - a must for lovers of purple prose.

Sorderon's Shadow is next on side one and again there's a touch of the landscapes as you attempt to free the land of Elindor from the rule of the not-very-nice wizard, Sorderon.

If you complete the nine tasks set by the Unnamed One, you may be able to cast the final spell that will end Sorderon's power. To complete these tasks, you'll have to trek around Elindor collecting magical objects from the characters who inhabit the land. The game is more of a conventional adventure than Doomdark, despite the landscaped graphics, and entry of commands is of the normal 'Get the sword, kill the oik' method rather than single key entry (though the command editor is fairly sophisticated). Sorderon's Shadow suffers a little bit because the landscaped graphics invite a not really appropriate comparison with Doomdark, possibly leading you to expect more than the game delivers. Underneath the visually attractive presentation, Sorderon's Shadow is a fairly good, but by no means outstanding, adventure.

Shadowfire and Enigma Force (both written by Denton Designs) are sensibly put together on side two of the tape, as they both feature the adventures of the Enigma team. Shadowfire caused a huge fuss when first released as it was one of the first games to feature a truly sophisticated icon control system. Both games put you in control of Zark, Syyik, Sevrina, and Maul of the Enigma team as they attempt to foil the plans of the galactic despot, General Zoff.

The challenge presented by the games lies in balancing the strengths and weaknesses of your team members and deploying them effectively against the forces controlled by Zoff. As with Doomdark, these games do not offer a single, clear cut path to victory and there's always room for improvement and new tactics. Shadowfire featured only the icon system and a static display of the characters and their positions, but in Enigma Force this had been upgraded to an animated display in which you could actually see the characters move in response to your commands.

My only quibble about these games was that I found the icon system a bit fiddly to cope with, but there's no denying the difficulty of the challenge that the two games present you with or the quality of their design. With four games like this all on the same tape, Beyond has produced a high-class compilation which, assuming you haven't already got most of the games, represents good value for followers of adventure and strategy games.

A Monster Hit.