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The Kingdom of Miremer was once a great place, and you were once its great leader. But fate saw fit to intervene and a terrible earthquake reduced the kingdom to rubble, abruptly ending your reign. Only you and a handful of subjects escaped.

Eventually you found a new world, and a new kingdom grew. And yet, in this huge, hitherto undiscovered land, there's no decisive government. Many towns and villages are self-sufficient and have their own internal hierarchy. With no overall leader, this world is ripe and ready to be conquered.

But by whom? You aren't the only new face around here. There are others seeking to lay claim to these lands. If you are to become king once more, you must not only achieve control over the existing population, but also put paid to the other pretenders to the crown.

The fictional land you are set to conquer is so large that attempting to tackle it in one go would be impossible. So it's been broken down into 200 bite-size chunks, each one an individual landscape. When one has been conquered, it's onto the next until the entire world is under your command.

In addition to this central 'Conquest' game, Powermonger is also capable of generating an impressive 4 x 10₅₇ (four followed by 57 zeros) original landscapes! Enough to keep even the most die-hard megalomaniacs happy.

In its quest to create not just a game, but a living, breathing world (or at least a world that seems to live and breathe) inside a computer, Bullfrog has done a commendable job.

Rather than create a straightforward strategy game, the team has concentrated on simulating a fictional world as realistically as possible, letting the gameplay grow from the real-world 'seeds'. And it works. The level of detail is astonishing. Families and communities work and depend on one another, and location and terrain determine people's behaviour. Even individual people's personalities can change the whole course of events!

Power
monger tests your tactical abilities to the full as, unlike Populous, it not all raping and pillaging. Keeping your army alive and faithful to you is a difficult enough task, and expanding your empire requires a carefully-prepared strategy.

You need to be a diplomat, or at least very crafty to succeed, as your actions alter the way people perceive you. If you go around wiping out villages and towns, don't expect anyone to be helpful if you want to trade or form an alliance later. The Captains add a new strategic dimension by allowing you to devise elaborate campaigns, but their involvement also means that you have to think some.

The most impressive aspect of Power
monger though, is the simplicity of the execution - a rudimentary bank of icons are all you need to carry out the most complex of campaigns. It's easy to get into, a joy to learn, and well nigh impossible to leave alone. Get the power!

Atari Powermonger promises to be identical to the Amiga version in all departments, with some ever-so-slight discrepancies in the sound department.

As was the case with Populous, almost every graphic and sound card is supported. The gameplay will remain exactly the same.