"A thousand words is worth a picture," might have been Infocom's motto. But now the masters of adventure say you can have both. Is this heresy? A sullen bow to public demand? Or the dawn of a new era? Peter Worlock investigates...

"Although we're moving away from all-text stories, everything you've come to know and love about interactive fiction will still be there. We are not compromising on quality, richness or depth in any way. What we are doing is enhancing these features with graphics that exhibit the same attention to quality and detail as our prose. A new technology is here and we're making full use of it." - Infocom Statement Of Intent

Infocom, the one-time masters of computer adventure, have not had a great twelve months. Pressured from all sides by the public demand for graphics, and the increasingly popularity of animated role-playing games, the US company looked less and less confident as the year wore on.

Whereas Infocom games used to be rare events, inevitably greeted by critical acclaim and public clamour, the last half-dozen releases came thick and fast. Some fans felt that the quality had declined as productivity had risen, others that the quality was as high as ever but no longer quite good enough. And there was an air of desperation about some moves like the ill-advised (and, in this cuontry, never-to-be-seen) InfoComics with their meagre storylines and laughable graphics.

Other developments, including the role-playing and self-mapping features of Beyond Zork received a lukewarm "thumbs up" but failed to recapture the excitement of old.

Now the company is poised to enter a new phase, with a range of products that ithopes will give the ailing old-timer a new lease of life. The new games have one thing in common: graphics.

Most radical of the new games is BattleTech, Infocom's first real role-playing game, but the RPG theme carries forward into other products, notably Journey, which Infocom says is "a whole new realm of entertainment software" called role-play chronicles (the company hasn't yet lost its yen for slightly pretentious marketing).

Hardened readers will recognise little new in the storyline: Tag, Praxix, Bergon, Esher and Minar head off on a quest for the "revered wisdom of the great wizard Astrix", exploring unknown lands and underground caves, and solving puzzles.

Written by Zork co-author Marc Blank, Journey is a more-or-less straight merging of the traditional Infocom text adventure with elements of role-playing games. The graphics in the game, in the form of Magnetic Scrolls' illustrations rather than the animated views of games like The Bard's Tale and DungeonMaster, look excellent, but the most that can be said at this stage is that if it works it should be great, "but the Journey, Grasshopper, is fraught with danger".

Much closer to the traditional adventure format is Shogun, written by second Zork co-author Dave Lebling. This is the second game licence of James Clavell's best-seller (Virgin produced an arcade-adventure of the book a couple of years ago), and the story will be familiar to anyone who has read the book, watched the TV mini-series, rented the video or played the Virgin game.

The game promises to have you "matching wits with tyrannical Japanese aristocrats and fighting off attacks by Ninja assassins", with a bit of love interest thrown in for good measure.

Again, there are illustrations, this time in "traditional 16th century Japanese style", and Mediagenic claims these are "the most outstanding that Infocom has created to date". It would be churlish to point out that this is no great recommendation, and, in fact, on the question of churlish, one hesitates to comment upon the fourth item on the menu: Zork Zero. In temporal terms, Infocom calls this the prequel to the Zork Trilogy, but in gaming terms it's a development of the Beyond Zork latecomer.

Naturally, the action takes place in Quendor and promises to explain many of the questions that have intrigued Zorkers for years, such as where did grues come from?

Written by Steve "Leather Goddesses" Meretzky, Zork Zero is a text-and-puzzles adventure of the old school, but again Infocom has felt obliged to bolt on a few bells and whistles. There is the self-mapping feature of Beyond Zork and a new parser, but also the iffy idea of little graphical puzzles such as Peggleboz, the Tower of Bozbar and Double Fanucci.

Cynical readers may imagine they hear the distant sound of a near-dead horse being flogged, which might be taking things a bit far. But Zork Zero does smack of the Hollywood syndrome: if in doubt, remake an oldie. What can we expect next: Son of Zork? Rambo Hills Cop Academy XII goes to Zork? Digging so deep into its past doesn't bode well for a company struggling to find its way into the future.

Zork Zero apart, however, the new line-up looks like a bold attempt to carry Infocom into a new era, while BattleTech is a radical departure and certainly the most exciting prospect. The merging of Infocom's classy adventures with a first-class RPG and combat system could take the games market by storm.

As if the switch to graphics wasn't shocking enough, heading up the list of forthcoming releases is Infocom's first non-adventure game. The officially licensed version of FASA's BattleTech system is a true computer role-playing game in which you play BattleMech rookie Jason Youngblood. Your aim is to survive long enough to save the universe from the deadly Kurita warriors.

On paper, at least, the new game will set any RPG fan's fingers twitching: four million locations, animated graphics in projected 3D style, together with masses of combat and the standard RPG features of developing characters and the ability to acquire new skills and equipment.

Infocom claims it will also boast a number of innovations, including the unlikely-sounding "emotive out-take". At various points in the game, the screen zooms in to show the emotional reactions of characters to various happenings.

Could this be the first three-Kleenex computer game?