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Atari software is usually associated with zapping away at coloured blobs of light. That's fine if arcade action is your scene, but I find I prefer something that stetches the imagination more. Consequently, being an Atari owner, I have had a limited choice. That, hopefully, is about to change. For it would seem that Atari have mended their ways and moved into the world of adventure.

So for those of us who have stuck with Atari, here comes The Pay-Off in the form of a full text, disc adventure using a minimum of 48K.

There you are, standing in Luigi's betting shop in New Jersey, in possession of a red hot tip. Now New Jersey turns out to be the sort of place where nicking the gold fillings from your best friend's back teeth is the order of the day - and that's while they are awake! So, seeing that you owe a lot of people a great deal of money - boy, have you got problems!

Nevertheless, Luigi is not so bad as far as bookies go - he is the only one who is prepared to give you a second look, let alone credit. But, of course, there are conditions whenever you approach Luigi - you have the choice of paying what you owe him, or accepting his invitation to a paddle in the Hudson river whilst wearing concrete wellies.

Things are not all that bad because you hear of a man on the streets who will part with $40,000 to anyone who can supply him with the fabulous Jang-y-Ryn Diamond. Taking up that offer would allow you to pay back Luigi, place that bet and start living again.

As you may have gathered, New Jersey is the type of place where even saying the word "Police" is guaranteed to get your head parted from the rest of your body. This is reflected in the puzzles and humour of this adventure into the world of crime. For example, walking into a shop and parting with any of your money is considered to be the world's greatest sin. The normal practice is to come out with more money than you went in with - plus some goodies as well. Also, there are many words in the game that have a double meaning, such as "fence" - use it in the wrong way and you could end up with a broken nose!

The layout of this adventure is very similar to that used by Scott Adams, even down to the same amount of text that appears on the screen at any one time.