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Level 9 have been one of the best British adventure software houses since the heady days of Colossal Cave and Adventure Quest. Their range of games has brought acclaim to the Austins and have set a standard for other adventure publishers to follow. After a number of years when the family were happy to publish games under their own label, the Austins decided to team up with Rainbird, leaving the marketing and promotions to a company better suited to deal with these aspects of the business.

Silicon Dreams and Knight Orc were released as a result of the partnership - nothing inspiring there. Recently Level 9 have moved on again and joined forces with a new company, Mandarin. The first product of this new merger is - in a similar vein to Silicon Dreams - an updated trilogy of Level 9's past adventures. All their later games, including Knight Orc, Gnome Ranger and now Time And Magik, have been created using the team's new state-of-the-art adventure system, KAOS. This powerful utility features ramsave, undo, multi-tasking and data compression.

Whilst innocently looking at a picture in your living room, you find yourself thrown into a race against time. The old man depicted within the frame comes to life and explains that the Timelords are planning an evil future for mankind.

You're charged with the task of travelling through nine time zones to seek out the ingredients required to make the formula with which to thwart the plot. All nine items have to be put in a cauldron which unfortunately is guarded by the Timelords.

Lords Of Time is an excellent adventure, consisting of many fine elements which add up to make a near-perfect game. The ability to explore almost all the locations is a great asset and the puzzles and characters incorporated in the game are amusing, interesting and, for the most part, logical.

This is the first Level 9 adventure to incorporate magik spells as a way of dealing with puzzles. The Red Moon Crystal has been stolen from the Moon Tower on the island of Baskalos - you must retrieve it. On your travels you find objects which act as amplifiers for magik - a dagger with which to attack enemies, a mushroom which decreases your size and so on.

Red Moon is too dedicated to the magik content of the adventure and neglects the puzzle/problem elements. This makes for a shallow, although atmospheric game of simply moving through the locations discovering which spell best deals with particular obstacles.

The dreaded magician Myglar has been driven mad by the magikal radiance of the Red Moon Crystal. It's your task to defeat him and take his place as the guardian of the jewel before darkness enshrouds the Earth. You need to learn eighteen magik spells before tackling Myglar, and must do so without paying the price - your sanity.

You get involved in this battle to the death through the simple act of blowing up a balloon - you don't realise it's inscribed with a spell. On inflating, the balloon bursts and you eventually re-open your eyes to find yourself in a bleak landscape, outside the house of the Red Moon.

This is the worst game of the three. Again the emphasis is on spells and not game-depth. Wandering around bizarre locations performing magik hither and thither holds no attraction for me whatsoever. The game was abysmal when it was first released and the enhancements don't improve it much.

The digitised graphics on the updated games are well done and although adding little, they're enjoyable to look at. The text enhancements text stick out as mere add-ons to the originals, but the many useful features such as the RAM save/load option and the OOPS command are a welcome development.

Time And Magik is good. Not all the components are particularly impressive - as usual the disk access time for graphics is a little slow - but the complete package should make a worthy addition to your collection - especially if you haven't played the games before.