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A re-release of the first "Questprobe" game, courtesy of US Gold's budget arm. You play Bruce Banner and his monstrous alter ego, and, in the author's ever-realistic style, must collect some gems.

This was the first Scott Adams game I played and I was bitterly disappointed. The major fault is an intrinsically poor design. It relies on dirty tricks ike having three different domes bt identically external descriptions of each, and random distances between them (an astoundingly dumb idea)! Nearly half the gems can be found by entering three simple commands in various places!

The usual Adams flaws are here, like dodgy vocabulary and very sparse description (complete with "TM" after some words). Add to this poor quality programming (thankfully it improved with later games). Among the ways this manifests itself are the sloppy presentation of messages, and a peculiar parser bug which means some commands must be entered twice before they're understood!

The graphics were stunning when this first came out; now some look scrappy, but most are still rather good. Shame they black out every time you enter a command.

There are a few good points. Sometimes when you type EXAMINE you are shown a close-up picture, a clever idea; and the pics illustrate actions as well as locations. The instructions are impressively lengthy for a cheapie. And a few of the puzzles are fun, if you can tolerate all the faults which make them harder.

Perhaps worth looking at if you're an Adams or a graphics fan, and certainly better at £3 than full price... but still pretty naff.