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For a long time the standard Spectrum adventure was The Hobbit. Everybody who had a Spectrum owned a copy (well, almost!). Now that this program has been converted for other machines, many more people can enjoy this superb adventure.

The program takes a long time to load, about 15 minutes on the Commodore 64 and about 10 on the Oric/Atmos. When the program has loaded and run one of the most amazing features of the game becomes apparent, a picture of the hobbit hole where the hero of our adventure, Bilbo Baggins, lives. The picture on the Atmos is only in two colours while the Commodore picture is multi-coloured, this holds throughout the adventure and is the only real difference between the two programs apart from the Commodore 64 having more pictures and drawing them on the screen up to ten times faster. This is the one drawback with the Atmos version, one really awkward picture takes over a minute to draw.

Each picture is only drawn once unless you ask the computer to do it again, so you needn't wait for a picture to be drawn to carry on the adventure if you re-visit a location. If, however, you wait for the graphics, the effect can be quite stunning. None of these problems exist on the Commodore 64 version, it can draw a picture in a few seconds, this leads me to suspect that the speed of the Atmos version is more of a machine limitation than a software fault.

The game itself is excellent. There are objects to collect, monsters to fight, and puzzles to solve. The other creatures in the adventure show an uncanny liveliness and can do the most unexpected things of their own accord.

I will not give away too much of the plot, but it will take you a long time to play it through, and some things are not what they seem to be some of the time. The plot is taken from J.R. Tolkien's book 'The Hobbit', a paperback version of which is supplied with the program. I recommend reading it to anyone that is going to play the game.

All the normal features of an adventure are here with a lot of very advanced extras as well. You can communicate to the program using Pigin English (or Inglish as Melbourne House call it) and you can even talk to the other creatures that are in the adventure with you, such as Gandalf or Thorin.

Descriptions of your location are good, and with the augmentation of pictures, it brings the whole scene to life.

I would like to see a disc version, as this would cut down the waiting time for loading, and saving of current position which is currently unavoidably long, but this is the price you pay for a long program.

Overall this program is pure excellence and is a must for any Commodore, Atmos, or Oric 1 owner.