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The adventure begins. Or so says the cassette inlay. In fact, Titanic for the 48k Spectrum is not really an Adventure, but a strategy game. I always thought that a strategy game contained an algorithm that allowed the player who had developed a sound strategy to win, give or take a bit of luck.

Titanic thrives on a very hit and miss approach. To begin with, you must raise enough cash to finance an expedition to find the sunken wreck and find and recover gold that was on board.

This is quite fun, for there is a selection menu of 15 likely sources on finance and you must gamble, to a certain extent, on which will offer you the most. I found a publishing company that was being quite generous (could it have been EMAP??!) so I took advantage of their offer of £240,000.

I then went shopping for same NASA photos of large objects in the search area, expert diving teams, repair kits for the ship and supplies.

The next part of the game involves shifting your ship around the sea by using direction keys and it jumps about 0.5 centimetres per time. If you have been wise enough to purchase a photo, about 17 pink spots mark the sea at the positions of large objects. On arrival at one of these, the chances are that you will have run straight into an iceberg. Even though you knew there was something there, there was no means of detecting whether to plough on regardless, or approach with caution.

Should you be lucky enough to detect a wreck below you, you may then ignore it or send down a diving team. Of course, it is quite likely to be an old wartime ship that explodes and takes your diving team with it.

If and when you eventually find the Titanic, then it must be explored (limited air supply) to find the gold. The Titanic has four floors which for some peculiar reason are arranged as a maze. All is not lost, though, for a map is available to view in some of the rooms. There are more hazards down there to avoid — well, you can't actually avoid them so much as just come upon them and hope that the random fate that awaits you is favourable.

To me, this made a change from an adventure. It could have made a good strategy game too, had the whole business not been so dependent on luck! As there is very little scope for planning your strategy, neither the description of strategy or adventure would seem to apply.