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To most software houses having six different titles concurrently in the Top 20 is an achievement scarcely dreamed of. To Infocom, this is a way of life!

When leading American distributor Softsell began publishing a fortnightly games software chart, some of Infocom's titles, including the renowned Zork, were already on the market. Zork, and an ever-increasing number of other Infocom evergreens immediately made permanent homes at the top of Softsell's and everyone else's charts.

Nearly two and a half years later nothing has changed - except that there are more Infocom titles at the top. Zork et al are still selling as well as ever.

Infocom's unprecedented success is striking proof that creativity and professionality still exist in the games arena. So what's their secret? Simple, they've stuck to what they're good at, which is text only adventure games of amazing depth and complexity. Couple this with some of the most innovative and outrageous packaging ever seen in a computer shop, slap a $50 price tag on the end and there you have it!

There have been two reasons why Infocom's American success has not been repeated in the U.K. Firstly, all their titles are disk based and secondly, historically, there has been a huge gap between price points in the UK and the US. But, with the gradual increase in the U.K.'s disk population, Commodore - to their eternal credit - decided to buy the rights to six of Infocom's early titles. These are Zork I, II & III, Starcross, Suspended and Deadline. The UK packaging is decidedly more modest but then so is the price, which at 11.95 represents fantastic value for money - provided you've got a disk drive.

Deadline is a perfect example of Infocom's interactive fiction, as they call it, and was the first of their Interlogic adventures. Written in 1982, Deadline is a "whodunnit" adventure of the highest calibre.

Mr. Marshall Robner, the industrialist and philanthropist was found dead yesterday morning in the library of his home. Apparently the suicide victim of an overdoes of the drug Ebullion, Robner was only discovered after the library door, locked from the inside, had been broken down with axes.

Three days earlier Robner had telephoned his solicitor, Warren Coates, to inform him of his decision to alter his will. Given the size of the estate, Coates has asked the chief of detectives (played by you) to quash any suspicions, which are inevitable in these circumstances. Mrs. Robner has reluctantly consented to allow you to spend one day (Twelve hours) in her house to confirm, or otherwise, the general consensus of opinion that Marshall Robner died of a self-administered overdose of Ebullion.

Melbourne House's Sherlock was a good detective adventure but Deadline leaves it standing in almost every department. Being disk-based, data can continually be accessed from a large database. Consequently, the location descriptions in Deadline are often well over a screen in length and paint a rich and vivid picture which adds to the authenticity of the game. Take, for example ONLY AN EXCERPT from the description of the library:

"A pencil is lying on the floor near the desk.
Beside the desk is a large collapsible tray.
Sitting on the tray is a bowl containing a white powdery substance.
Alongside the desk is a wicker wastepaper basket.
The wastepaper basket contains:
a bunch of crumpled papers.
Lying on the floor, overturned, is a beautiful saucer.
Turned onto its side, lying on the floor, is a beautiful teacup.
Lying atop the desk is a pad of white notepaper.
A desk calendar is here, open to July 7th.
There is a bottle of Ebullion here."

This is where the body was found after supposedly drinking his late night cocoa and taking a handful of Ebullion. More about the pencil and notepad later.

As with all Infocom adventures Deadline accepts complete and complicated sentences drawn from a very large vocabulary of 'understood' words. Not only can you examine an object but you can also examine under, behind and near something as well.

You will meet a number of characters during the course of your investigations, some of which may have vital information which you must coax out of them. Shouting at people from a distance is strongly discouraged as it is considered rude and may make them less helpful. Once you and another person are in the same place you can ask questions or ask that person to do something for you. For example:

'Mrs. Jones, tell me about Mr. Jones'

and

'Fred, show me the bullet'

are both acceptable sentences. In building up a picture of the characters and their relationships with each other it is illuminating, to say the least, to see what they all think of each other - bitch, bitch! Objects can also be shown to people in order to see if they elicit any response, such as raised eyebrows etc.

Mrs. Robner receives a phone call just after nine o'clock in the morning. When the phone rings she will make her way to one of the rooms in the house with a phone. If you follow her, she can be seen whispering something into the receiver and hurriedly replacing it. Such is the interactiveness of Deadline that you can restart, go up to the library (which also has a phone) and wait until the phone rings. Again Mrs. Robner answers the phone but this time you can listen in!

1. Always ask each character what they think of all the others.
2. The gardener may get very angry when he finds footprints in the garden. Ask him to show them to you - there are vital clues in amongst the roses.
3. Count the crockery!
4. In the library, amongst other things, are a notepad and pencil. Type in 'Shade notepad with pencil'. This reveals impressions left by writing on the previous sheets. Only a few letters show up but it should be possible to put together the contents of the whole letter. Our version is as follows:
   
   "Baxter,
   For the last time I must insist on your stopping a merger with Onmidyne Corporation otherwise I will be forced to .... documents in my possession which are replicas of your Focus s ... Please reconsider before it's too late,
   Marshal"

All in all, Deadline is one of the most engrossing adventures I have ever played and one in which you genuinely feel that you have adopted the role of a Chief of Police trying to solve a case. If you have a Commodore 64 disk drive and you like having your mind stretched then this is for you.