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William Wobbler is not the most handsome hero that I've seen in a video game but he is certainly one of the largest, measuring three sprites high. Similarly, all of the locations and objects are large giving the game the appearance of a cartoon.

The idea is to investigate a series of underground passages which harbour keys and other useful objects which lead to further discoveries which will eventually mean a prize worth £1,000 prize to some lucky person. There is a catch to this, before you can claim you must save your position on the special free disk supplied with the game. This assumes that you know someone with a disk drive, a little unfair I think.

William is well named; as he walks his head wobbles and even the scoreboard wobbles up and down as it scrolls continuously across the foot of the screen. He starts his journey in a landscape that looks like a stage set, with what turns out to be a row of ten hollowed out tree stumps spreading ahead of him. Spreading behind him is the immense hulk of a mother-in-law armed with a similarly outsize club which will reduce his height somewhat if he doesn't move quickly enough.

Another problem is a pesky blue bird which swoops and rises across the screen threatening to break up the partnership between William's head, body and life force.

William only has one life, if he is careless enough to lose it then he has to start again from the beginning unless he possesses a floppy disk, but more of that later.

His first task is to find the glowing orb which is a vital key to success. One of the tunnels at the bottom of the tree trunk entrances is not guarded by a lozenge-shaped droid. At the end of this passageway is the resting place of the orb. Unfortunately, the tunnels are randomly arranged at the start of each game which may mean that you will spend a fair amount of time searching for it at the start of each game. I found the best way was to force William to commit suicide until the correct tunnel appeared at the foot of the first trunk.

Once in possession of the orb, William will automatically produce it when faced with a droid, thus causing the obstacle to disappear. This automatic production of the correct object to solve a predicament is a consistent feature of the game.

After exploring a tunnel, William can leap down a hole and, like a mutant Alice, float gently down to the ground. This is the bottom passage which is inhabited by snakes and flying frogs. Contact with either of these is bad news and causes William to throw a wobbler before he expires.

At the end of the passage is a rope and a disk drive. The rope is the only way back to the surface and the disk drive cannot be used until a disk is found much later in the game. Once you have the disk, your life becomes marginally more secure but you still have to get safely back to the drive first.

Apart from useful objects, William will encounter amorphous shapes which can eventually be combined to form a picture which is the key to the £1,000 prize so gather them all as quickly as possible.

I found William Wobbler to be a most enjoyable game despite the lack of sound effects. Wizard claim that this is because most of the C64's usable memory is occupied by the visual aspects of the game, though there is a very well arranged piece of music which runs through the game.