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There's a nautical note to Bob Chappell's musings this week as he tackles deep-sea deadlies in his search for hidden treasure

Sunken treasure, deep-sea diving, a shady bunch of cohorts, Davy Jones' Locker, and all things nautical and nefarious. These are the staple ingredients of Cutthroats, the latest text adventure from the Infocom stable.

The adventure is available, on disk only, for a number of machines including Atari, Apple and Commodore 64. It was written by Michael Berlyn, author of two other superb Infocom adventures, Suspended and Infidel. If you've sampled either, you'll know you're in for a real treat when you play this latest in the Tale of Adventure series.

You're a daring deep-sea diver, holed up on Hardscrabble Island, and an historical book on shipwrecks has been placed in your safekeeping by an old shipmate. Life is cheap, skullduggery is the main course on the menu, and yourpal is not long for this world. He's murdered within minutes of leaving you. A miserable end for him but possibly wealth untold for you since the loaned book contains a map showing newly discovered locations of treasure-laden wrecks.

With the aid of the book, equipment, various shady characters and a goodly dollop of derring-do, you are out to salvage treasures from a shipwreck on the ocean bed. One clever wrinkle to this tale is that there are four differently located wrecks. You only have to find one but every time you play, the wreck is randomly determined by the game.

The action proper starts at the Red Boar Inn. A hastily scrawled note has been slipped under your door. The note, signed by 'Johnny', offers the prospect of a big deal if you make a rendezvous with him at 8:30 in The Shanty. Who could resist such an assignation?

The Shanty, a place of refreshment, is down near the whart. If you expect this quaintly named quayside cafe to be a tourist halt with chintz tablecloths, afternoon tea and buttered scones and a string quartet playing Victor Sylvester, you've bought the wrong adventure.

The Shanty is no place to take your granny for a cup of Earl Grey and a cucumber sandwich. It's a scruffy tavern whose customers are unsavoury enough to bring a tear of nostalgia to the one eye of Long John himself.

Take Pete the Rat, for example. He got his name while serving as cook on a far-east voyage. When the food ran out, he did his best to keep the crew supplied with fresh meat. No wonder why they threw him off at the next port of call.

Then there's the Weasel, a small greasy man with shifty eyes who picks his teeth with a nasty looking knife. For the price of a noggin, he'd sell his own granny, never mind yours.

Hobbling up and down the bar is a parrot with an eye-patch and a wooden leg. The locals consider the parrot to be insane. Engage it in conversation and you'll wonder whether it's you that has a marble or two adrift. For me, the parrot's choice of words instantly conjured up irrepressible images of WC Fields and Wimpy (from the Popeye cartoon saga). Polly is apt to comment: "After due consideration, I find myself in an embarrassing position. I would gladly except a hard biscuit today if you would accept payment on Tuesday."

You should realise be now that recovery of the treasure trove is going to be no piece of cake. But it's all great fun and the adventure is guaranteed to provide you with plenty of pleasure along the way to snaffling the treasure or getting your throat cut, whichever comes first.

All the excellent Infocom features are present: sophistication, full sentence parser; stimulating puzzles; immaculate, detailed prose; nicely-worked plot; multiple routes to a successful conclusion. And it all hangs together so beautifully.

No doubt about it, Cutthroats is yet another successful adventure in a long line of triumphs for Infocom. Long may it continue, says I.

And now for something completely different. Return of the Joystick is a text and graphics adventure for 48K Spectrum owners. It's different for two reasons. First, it has a daft plot and second, it has lots of in-jokes to entertain computer-game buffs.

While much of the humour is a mite childish, it's great fun coming upon well-known characters and spotting spoofs of popular games.

The game (constructed with the aid of Gilsoft's Quill and Illustrator) is set around the twelfth ZX Microfair and involves you in a barmy search for a joystick. Walk east from King's Cross Station and you end up in Moscow's Red Square.

A bonus on the reverse side of the cassette is an introductory program followed by a clutch of excellent spoof screen title-pages including The Gobbit and Lords of Daylight. They really do look like the originals. My personal favourite was Chublock, showing the famous detective with thumb in mouth.

All good, clean fun. The game is £4.95 (£6.95 on Microdrive cartridge) and available from Delta 4 Software, The Shieling, New Road, Swanmore, Hants SO3 2PE.