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Fantasy adventures - what would we do without them? Play shoot-'em-ups, I suppose. Elvira is an adventurous romp through a medieval land. You are a hapless chap hired by Elvira to open a chest for her and defeat 999 creatures from somewhere called the Seventh Dimension (must be somewhere near Slough).

The game starts with Elvira hiring you, A-Team style, to do the job. She then gives you some potions and a teeny-weeny dagger and off you trot in search of, well, in search of whatever you're in search of. The game is entirely icon-controlled. To pick up or drop something you simply pull it out of the screen into your inventory display. Fortunately you can examine items both on screen and in your inventory.

The graphics in Elvira are excellent. Considerable time has been spent getting the right gloomy look to the castle and the surrounding countryside. When you snuff it, a suitably grim picture appears with your eyes or head missing - depending on the way you died. A great deal of use is also made of Elvira's large cleavage, which appears at every possible moment, wobbling about like so much blancmange.

The fight sequences are a case of either blocking, parrying, thrusting and hacking. Make the wrong choice and an unhealthy spurt of blood comes out of your midriff (as in Alien!). The main problem is finding ways of fighting the various nasty creatures which peole Castle Imelda. If yo want to avoid dying too often, use the handy save game option.

Elvira is a giggle. Even so, be warned that some of the graphics are distinctly gory - not really suitable for a younger audience. Another problem is the length of time the game requires for disk accessing - even on a hard drive it takes a good few seconds to update the screen. This makes swift movement impossible. Overall, then, Elvira is an excellent adventure marred by some annoying glitches.