Producer: Melbourne House, 48K
£14.95

To date the great adventure, based on the famous Tolkien novel of the same name, which is included for the price. This game has a largish vocabulary and allows sentence with link words. Artificial intelligence of a kind enlivens the action as the characters continue their lives regardless of what you do. It's possible to inter-relate with them to some degree, depending on their feelings towards you. Some even get killed without you knowing about it until you stumble across their bodies! I've forgotten what the quest is, but it's hardly important - playing the game is. Very long and totally absorbing. A classic.

Producer: Melbourne House, 48K
£14.95

To date the great adventure, based on the famous Tolkien novel of the same name, which is included for the price. This game has a largish vocabulary and allows sentence with link words. Artificial intelligence of a kind enlivens the action as the characters continue their lives regardless of what you do. It's possible to inter-relate with them to some degree, depending on their feelings towards you. Some even get killed without you knowing about it until you stumble across their bodies! I've forgotten what the quest is, but it's hardly important - playing the game is. Very long and totally absorbing. A classic.

Producer: Melbourne House, 48K
£14.95

To date the great adventure, based on the famous Tolkien novel of the same name, which is included for the price. This game has a largish vocabulary and allows sentence with link words. Artificial intelligence of a kind enlivens the action as the characters continue their lives regardless of what you do. It's possible to inter-relate with them to some degree, depending on their feelings towards you. Some even get killed without you knowing about it until you stumble across their bodies! I've forgotten what the quest is, but it's hardly important - playing the game is. Very long and totally absorbing. A classic.

SINCLAIR ACTS TO IMPROVE THE STANDARD OF ITS NAMED SOFTWARE

John Gilbert looks at the latest group of cassettes issued by Sinclair and finds that it is now setting the standards.

A new batch of Sinclair Research software for the ZX-81 and Spectrum shows a marked improvement in the quality of programs and a continuation of fine artwork on the cassette inserts.

The reason is that the company is selling programs from other independent companies, such as Melbourne House and Artic, instead of continuing to rely on Psion, Mikro-Gen and ICL.

The Hobbit which takes first place in the new releases for quality and value for money. This adventure game, which the makers claim uses artificial intelligence, is discussed in Mind Games on page 93.

VU-3D, for the 48K Spectrum, is another good offering from Psion. It allows the user to create a three-dimensional representation of an object on the television screen. The object can then be rotated and viewed from any angle. The objects can be displayed as wirework figures or can be shaded. They can also be magnified and reduced.

It is possible to store the figure on tape in a data file and re-load it to view again. The program costs £9.95 but even though it has some good features it still seems over-priced.

Games feature strongly in the new tapes. Sinclair is selling the Artic range of adventures, A, C and D. Adventure A works on the 16K or 48K Spectrum and 16K ZX-81 and is called Planet of Death.

You are stranded on a planet and must return to your spaceship. There is no guide to the keywords but with a little thought you can discover the help command. At times the suggestions can be very unhelpful and it is a good idea to construct a map, as some of the help suggestions may make you retrace your footsteps.

The next adventure so far released is C, called Ship of Doom. It can be run on the 48K Spectrum and 16K ZX-81.

Your ship is captured by aliens who are searching for humanoids to replace their brains with microchips. The object of the game is to escape from the alien craft by breaking the gravitational field. To do so you must find the control room of the alien ship.

The help command is a little more useful in this game and it is easier to get further when playing the game.

Adventure D, called Espionage island, can be used on the 48K Spectrum or 16K ZX-81. You must escape from an aircraft which is about to crash into the Atlantic. You must the reach the island safely, avoid capture, and try to discover the secret of the island. The game is more difficult than the others and many people have not managed to get out of the aircraft, even though there is a parachute. All the adventures cost £6.95.

Leaving adventure games, Reversi, or Othello as it is sometimes called, can be played on the 16K Spectrum or 16K ZX-81. The game has nine levels, from novice to expert, and the computer is difficult to beat. The makers claim that Reversi reflects the strict contemporary morality of Victorian society but we believe that it can traced to Arabic origins. Reversi costs £7.95.

An interesting addition to the range of software is the Artic 1K Chess. It takes some technical wizardry to squeeze this kind of game into the unexpanded ZX-81.

The game can be played using one of two opening moves. Because of the lack of memory, castling, pawn promotion and capturing en passant are not allowed. The game loads in approximately 40 seconds and that is ideal for someone who wants a quick game of chess without having to load from a tape which takes several minutes.

The computer also makes its moves very fast for the amount of memory available to it. 1K Chess costs £4.95.

Super Glooper is an amusing game of Pac-man on the 16K ZX-81. Glooper must paint the maze before the aliens kill him. Unfortunately it is difficult to evade those aliens using the standard ZX-81 keyboard but it is not impossible. Glooper can also pick up one of the shields at the corners of the maze to protect himself and chase the aliens.

On the other side of the tape is Frogs, a game of Frogger. You must get the frogs over the river via the moving boats to the jetties on the other bank. If froggie falls into the river, it drowns.

You score points for each frog you get across the river and you can have eight frogs to send to their deaths. Super Glooper and Frogs cost £4.95.

Another game with a familiar-sounding theme is Through the Wall. It is based on Breakout and is available for the 16K ZX-81. On the other side of the cassette is Scramble, also a familiar theme. Both games on one cassette represent good value at £4.95.

A package for the 1K ZX-81, called 1K Games, has also been released. The games include Jackpot, in which you must try to win the 25 pence jackpot from a one-armed bandit; Etch and Sketch, where you can draw pictures on the screen; and Maze Game, where you must find your way out of the conventional maze.

The release of this cassette, costing £4.95, is a good idea at a time when so many people are buying ZX-81s.

A basic Toolkit is available for the 16K ZX-81. It provides a series of machine code routines to make the job of programming easier. It includes a re-number routine, a search and replace routine, a merge routine to put together two separate Basic programs, and a routine to put a Basic program above RAMTOP and out of the way of the NEW command. The Toolkit costs £5.95.

Two database programs are available in the range for the 48K Spectrum. They are called Collector's Pack and Club Record Controller.

Collector's Pack can be used to store information about coins, stamps or even records. The Club Record Controller will store information about people such as addresses and telephone numbers. It would be useful to schools or even someone who runs a private club. Both packages are easy to use and cost £9.95.

Adventure B, Inca Curse, for the 48K Spectrum is an upgrade of an adventure which Artic wrote for the 16K ZX-81. The adventurer is exploring in the jungle when he finds an Incan Temple. The aim is to go in and drag out all the treasure, or as much a you can carry. It all seems so easy until you enter the game and step into the temple.

The authors have managed to cram a good deal into this adventure and the Artic top score of 3,200 points will take some beating. We must admit that it is not one of the adventures in which we have made much progress. Adventure B costs £6.95.

The latest release of tapes is certainly better than the previous one. The games, utility, and business areas have been covered well but there is still a lack of good educational software. The only tapes available tend to be multi-choice and question-and-answer sessions.

The Psion tapes seem to be the best for quality at the moment and the ones with the most interesting concepts. None of the cassettes reviewed was bad but The Hobbit, Vu-3D, 1K Chess, and Super Glooper seem best.

NEW CASSETTE CAN BE HOBBIT-FORMING

Tolkein's tale has captured the imagination. Quentin Heath attempts to get to the ring but finds he wastes too much time.

Sales of The Hobbit, an adventure game for the 48K Spectrum, have been going very well, according to Melbourne House, the company which produces it.

It is one of the most complex games for the Sinclair machines I have seen and that is one of the reasons why it is selling so well. The plot follows closely that of Tolkien's book and there are added dangers to make it more interesting.

There are many objects in the game which cannot be used until certain situations have been passed or conditions met. They tend to take up a fair amount of time on this adventure. Much time can be wasted by checking objects which prove to be useless. For instance, many people who see the chest in the hobbit hole at the beginning of the game usually are tempted to look inside.

The player may suspect that the chest contains weapons or armour but there is nothing inside, That may cause further consternation and a furious search. All that has happened to most victims of the game I know, including several people in the Sinclair User office. Usually a chest is for putting things into and at the beginning of the game there is nothing to store in the chest. The one thing to remember is that the most ordinary and unmysterious objects usually prove the most useful.

At all costs you must be practical, as examining objects which seem mysterious may lead you into the dark.

The Inglish language specially developed by the makers, which all the games characters speak fluently, is causing problems for some people. Most of the time Gandalf and Thorin wander around saying 'Hurry up', 'What's this', or 'No' at the slightest provocation. You should not give up, though - experiment by talking to Thorin, Gandalf and Elrond. The information one of them will give you is certainly not misguided.

If you have managed to obtain more information from any of the characters, I would be interested to hear. In the early stages of the game it is best to follow one direction when going forward and that is explained in the Hints and Tips column. If in doubt, follow that direction and it will usually get you out of trouble.

There are some very odd moves which you can make during the course of the game. For instance, if you have a sword you could kill Elrond when you visit Rivendell. That is very easy to do but your blood lust could prevent you learning Elronds secret. That may not seem very important at the time but it could make a difference to the outcome.

A sword is a basic piece of for any adventurer and can be of use against most foes, as well as Elrond. Your sword is provided for you in the early part of the adventure and it is a good idea to pass the trolls to get it. The secret of the sword is difficult to unlock but you must remember that problems are not half so bad in the daylight.

There are two other problems which adventurers in The Hobbit are meeting. The first is the maze in the misty mountains. If anyone has managed to get out alive I would like to know. The second problem is that the program sometimes crashes when you have battled your way through the Elven Kings Halls, got into one of the barrels in the cellar and plunged into the underground river.

One correspondent has had that happen several times. The makers of the game believe that it is the fault of the particular tape copies.

DWARVES WHO SPEAK ENGLISH

The parallel I drew a few months ago between an Adventure game and a story is exemplified in The Hobbit from Melbourne House, which runs on a 48k Spectrum.

The game is presented very much like a book - the "front cover" with full colour illustrated title is displayed whilst the program loads.

The game is a fairly close representation of the book, which is itself supplied as part of the package. The action of the game takes place in over 50 of the locations described in the book and depicted on the map of Middle Earth.

On the first visit to a location, a full colour picture of the surroundings unfolds, adding to the impression of a story-book game.

But the player should beware of gazing at the attractive pictures for too long - another feature of the game is "Animaction", whereby the various creatures go about their business inside the computer.

Messages appear spontaneously on the screen from time to time as a result of this background activity, which has an effect on the course of the game. While you dither, don't be surprised to see Gandalf or Thorin, up and leaving either.

The possible commands are very flexible. A language recognition program called "Inglish" is incorporated, and "ATTACK THE TROLL CAREFULLY WITH THE SWORD" is recognised as easily as "RUN".

The game is linked to the story by a 16-page booklet which explains the grammar and vocabulary of "Inglish", the split-screen mode of display, plus hints and tips on playing the game. If you are a Hobbit fan then you will enjoy playing the book and reading the game I think?

The cassette costs £14.95 as it is sold with a paperback version of the Tolkien classic. If you don't know the story of Bilbo, Gandalf, Gollum and the dwarves and their epic journey across Middle Earth, it will provide a few clues to playing the game.

Reviewer: Keith Campbell

Memory Required: 48K
Price: £14.95

Melbourne House has based The Hobbit, on the novel by Tolkien. It helps to have read the book in finding your way about.

The Hobbit is claimed to be an advance on other adventure games because it introduces other characters from the book who react to the player in the role of Bilbo with an independent life of their own. It also allows you - in a limited fashion to enter sentences rather than single words as commands.

In practice these extra features do not amount to much and give the program greater scope for the sort of inconsistencies adventure programs are prone to. Thorin, for example, repeatedly enters the scene and tells you to hurry up. This is irritating because you were unaware that he had left and he seems to be totally devoid of constructive ideas. It is not a good idea, however, to kill him off since he sometimes proves too strong for your attack. Furthermore the manual suggests that you should stay on good terms with the other members of your party if you are to succeed in your quest.

Many of the locations in the adventure are illustrated by some excellent graphics. We only managed to complete 7.5 percent of the game during which the text was accompanied by six different pictures. The graphics coupled with a more varied plot than usual make The Hobbit superior to any other adventure games available for the Spectrum.

Phil Garratt, after a brief sojourn in Middle Earth, takes time off to tell us what he found there.

Once upon a time, a young professor, bored to distraction with marking School Certificate exam papers, wrote on a blank sheet of paper 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit'. That was over fifty years ago, and at the time neither the professor, JRR Tolkien, nor anyone else had any idea what a hobbit was. Eventually the story was told, and ever since, The Hobbit has been one of the most popular and best loved children's books. Its popularity and that of The Lord of the Rings which followed, is matched only by the seriousness with which some Tolkien fans dissect the books for allegorical meaning, never intended by the author. So it takes a brave group of people to set out on an 18 month adventure to re-write The Hobbit as a computer game. Fortunately for 48K Spectrum owners, the team at Melbourne House have managed it, and in pretty good style too.

You may wonder how it could have taken 18 months, when the Spectrum has been available for less than a year. The answer is that the program was originally being developed on a TRS-80, but was converted to the Spectrum in order to make use of high resolution colour graphics. The plot of the adventure has been designed to follow the original book as closely as possible, in fact to such an extent that a copy of the book is supplied with the program in order to provide additional clues. Also part of the package is a 16 page book of instructions, although if you find the prospect of digesting them not to your liking, there's nothing to stop you rushing headlong into the enterprise. After all. that's what Bilbo did! The instruction book is well-structured and clearly laid out, although disappointingly lacking in hints!

ENTER THE DRAGON

The game is set in Middle Earth during its Third Age, when it was inhabited by all manner of creatures, long before the world was overrun by Man. You take the role of Bilbo, the hobbit of the title, and your task is to steal treasure from a dragon, 'a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm called Smaug'. In the book. Bilbo has 13 dwarves to help him get there and (hopefully) back again, but in the program you have just one companion, Thorin Oakenshield. He is an 'enormously important dwarf' not least because we are warned that if he gets killed, Bilbo is most unlikely to survive. Along the way you will meet elves, wolves and orcs as well as the famous wizard, Gandalf the Grey, who is usually not far away.

The program is written in 40K of machine code and data, so it takes about four minutes to load. While you are waiting, you have an impressive picture to look at of Smaug and the Lonely Mountain which contains his lair. The program starts by drawing a colour picture of Bilbo's nice bright hobbit-hole, complete with round green door and wooden chest waiting to be filled with dragon's plunder.

The use of graphics is one of the features which makes The Hobbit special. The adventure contains something like 80 locations, of which no less than 30 are illustrated. The graphics are based on drawings commissioned from the artist Kent Rees, and while none of them are quite as elaborate as the picture of Smaug, they do contain a remarkable amount of detail. By using special techniques, each picture is stored in only 3,000 - 4,000 bytes. The outline is drawn very quickly, but the filling in with colour is done line by line and so does take a few seconds. It can be slightly tedious when the same picture keeps being re-drawn, but this is only a minor drawback as the addition of graphics as good as these adds a whole new dimension to the adventure.

PICTURE THIS

Once you have admired the pretty picture, pressing any key gives the written description of the location. This also has some special features. Firstly, the screen is split into two 'windows', the top 17 lines being used for the illustrations, the narrative descriptions and responses from the various characters. This is in upper and lower case, and by redefining the character set. the output is displayed with 42 characters per line. The bottom 5 lines make up the 'communication window' in which you type your commands and if the computer doesn't understand or cannot carry out your request, a message is displayed here. The lower display is made up of standard 32 characters per line capitals. Some keys have special meanings - '?' means repeat the command, 5, 6, 7 and 8 can be used to move West, South, North and East, 0 deletes the last character entered and Shift 0 deletes the whole line.

Commands are entered using what the authors have named Inglish, which they claim is the most sophisticated natural language recognition program yet developed on any micro. You can enter quite long sentences, such as 'Attack the warg carefully with the knife' and 'Pick up the rope and sword'. More than one sentence can even be entered, up to a maximum of 128 characters. The authors claim a vocabulary of more than 500 words, which is extraordinarily large. Yet, despite the size it is very quick, although the system is not perfect. For example 'light' is a command common to many adventures, and is accepted in The Hobbit, although nothing happens and the curious message 'You light' is displayed. Similarly, if you attempt to cross the enchanted river by saying 'Cross', the program says 'You cross', but when you look around you find that you are, in fact, still stuck on the original side.

CRIES FOR HELP...

Several special commands are also available. 'Print' copies everything in the upper, narrative window to the printer. The graphics displays are not copied, which is perhaps just as well as it would slow down the game if they were, and also the black and white result wouldn't do justice to the colourful designs. Your commands are not sent to the printer, so you cannot necessarily use the output to follow an earlier path. Still, Bilbo is meant to be fond of making and reading maps! 'Noprint' turns the printer off. 'Save' saves your current position on tape; just the necessary data is saved, so it only takes 30 seconds. The program doesn't use the standard ROM routine, and I found that the tape position was important as starting too early gave a tape loading error. The data saved can also be verified before continuing, and is reentered with 'Load'.

'Score' tells you how far into the adventure you have delved, based on the percentage of the locations you have discovered. I never managed to get very far at all before a troll, warg, or some other unidentified creature drastically rewrote the book by killing me off and sending me back to the start. 'Help' is a very useful command, and will quite often give a hint as to the way out of your latest predicament.

Two other features of The Hobbit that the authors are very proud of are 'Animtalk' and 'Animaction'. The first allows you to speak to anyone present so, for example, you can enter 'Say to Thorin "examine the map'", and he will either respond or say 'No', depending on his mood. 'Animaction' refers to the fact that all the animals and individuals have an independent character and will be moving around and making decisions on their own, without waiting for you to do anything. So far about the only animaction I have witnessed is Gandalf behaving uncharacteristically indecisively, by continually giving and then taking back a curious map. Also, Thorin seems to either wait, enter, say 'Hurry up' or start singing about gold, apparently at random.

A WIZARD GAME

Despite having only explored little more than an eighth of 'Wilderland', I have seen nine graphic locations and picked up which I assume will have some purpose. ! haven't yet found a way into the roots of the Misty Mountains, but I hope I will as I greatly look forward to the riddle contest with Gollum (incidentally the riddles are different to the ones in the book, not surprisingly!). At a couple of recent micro exhibitions I have noticed that the staff on the Sinclair stand (when not selling hundreds of Spectrums) have been deeply engrossed in playing The Hobbit rather than any of the dozens of other programs available on their stand. The fact that they had neither solved nor tired of this program says quite a lot! It is certainly a marvellous game, which should set the standard for future Spectrum adventures. However, in spite of the excellent graphics and packaging, I feel that £14.95 is a rather high price for a program which is clearly going to sell many thousands of copies.

The Hobbit is available from Melbourne House, 131 Trafalgar Road, London SE10 and branches of WH Smith.

Melbourne House
£9.95

When The Hobbit first came out, I was not as amazed as all the reviewers of the time. In fact I disliked the game. I was unimpressed by the "independent" characters (all that "Thorin sits down and sings about gold" rubbish); and I objected to some of the hefty £14.95 (which seemed vastly expensive when compared with an average of £5 per cassette at the time) paying for a book which I, like many other people, already owned. Since then I have become an adventure reviewer and know what makes a good game. The ridiculous hype has died down and I can appreciate the program's good points, which are numerous.

Furthermore, I can review it honestly without being in awe. That said, it is deservedly a classic - and the game responsible for introducing so many people to the wonderful world of adventures.

The program has aged remarkably well; its speed and presentation still compare favourable with anything on the market, as does the friendly vocabulary and the responsive, helpful replies, the graphics are variable; some duff, some still good, but none really poor. They tend to improve the further you progress.

The location descriptions are far briefer than I remembered, perhaps too short by today's standards. However, with all the messages and characters wandering around, there remains a reasonable amount to be read.

The game has some lovely - and now classic - puzzles. You haven't lived until you've escaped the Goblin's dungeon! Another admirable feature that is rare even today is that many problems can be solved in a variety of ways, as can the game itself; gaining the treasure is by no means the sole task. This helps add realism to the computer controlled world and I begin to see what everyone was raving about. Character interaction is a vital part of the game, and well handled, though not so mind-boggling these days. What did happen, by the way, to the other twelve dwarves?

In many respects I prefer this to the first Lord Of The Rings game. The Hobbit has nothing like the same complexity, but is much more enjoyable to play, and I feel captures the atmosphere of the book better (no photographs or heavy metal here!), hen again. The Hobbit is a far less complicated story.

The only real problem is the price. I would have thought past sales would have paid for The Hobbit's development many times over by now; yet at £10 there's virtually nothing more expensive. Considering the book is no longer included, its price has hardly changed. I'm sure some shops have been selling The Hobbit off as old stock for much less, and at a mid-budget price of £5, or as one of Elite's "Classics", this would be a monster hit. As it stands, I would say it's still worth playing, but make your own judgment as to whether it is the best use for your adventuring budget.

The world of computer games is divided into two types of people - those who have escaped the goblins' dungeons and those who are still stuck there.

The Hobbit was ahead of its time when released in 1982 and remains the adventure by which all others are judged. You must follow the footsteps of Tolkien's Bilbo Baggins in his quest for the treasure of the dragon, Smaug. The game features illustrations, character interaction, and a text interpreter allowing the input of English sentences. The plot changes each time you play it, and the list of possible solutions is still growing.

Position 1/50

I stood at the edge of the Black River (not very wide across) and pondered my situation. I had the short strong sword and the rope courtesy of two dead (literally stone-cold dead) trolls, and the valuable golden ring snatched after great effort from under the nose of a now dead Gollum. (It seems pathological killers are well catered for in this game.) I had been incarcerated in, and escaped from, the notorious Goblin's Dungeon with a little help from my friends. I had met the friendly elf Elrond, and found refuge in Beorn's House. My companions, a singing dwarf and a wandering wizard, had long been left behind. Well armed and supplied, I had crossed mountains, killed goblins and acquired maps. Familiar with the almost certain fatality encountered by taking some routes, I had now reached an impasse, I could see no way of finding the dreaded dragon, Smaug, or his hoard of treasure.

However, the game's superiority over other adventures available to me, and its unique feature of independently moving characters, persuaded me to persevere, and my capture by a wood elf led me deeper into this comp game. Eventually, by following the plot in the famous book, I found and killed the dragon and laid claim to his treasure. Unfortunately that is only half the game, as the treasure has to be carried back to a now far-distant starting point.

The most remarkable features of this game strike you very quickly. The high resolution graphic displays promised are delivered in the title page when the game is loading; Smaug the ferocious dragon belches such realistic flame at you that I almost felt the need for an asbestos shield! Any adventure played for the first few times invariably seems to result in frequent death, and after restarting a few times the second powerful feature becomes apparent: the characters move independently of you, so you are never sure whether your two companions will help you in the next location or whether they will hurriedly depart to leave you in the company of vicious thugs like wargs or goblins who will quite happily decapitate you despite your pleas for mercy.

Yes! I said pleas for mercy because you can communicate with friend or foe depending on your inclination. This device is very helpful in exploiting the abilities of your companions, and much of the game depends on successfully communicating your ideas to allies.

These features, in addition to the fantastic scenario and depth of imagination used in Tolkien's book (whose plot seems tailor-made for conversion into an adventure game), make this program a remarkable achievement. The high-resolution pictures, of which there are about 30, were drawn with the help of an artist whose eye for colour and detail provoke the atmosphere of Tolkien's book at the various locations: the Bewitched Gloomy Place is dark and forbidding while the Bleak Barren Place is suitably inhospitable.

The Hobbit is accompanied by the original book, which is followed faithfully, and many clues are to be found therein. An instruction booklet is also contained in the package and explains the highly flexible user-friendly language 'Inglish' which the game understands. This, incidentally, was developed by a linguistics expert and allows for longer more complicated sentences without the limit of one objective per sentence. The instruction booklet is well written and the game is easily entered into. The high-resolution colour displays help your imagination to envisage The Hobbit's world, and the response to instructions is very quick. Quick responses are also required of the player as The Hobbit plays in real time, thus adding to the excitement. I can wholeheartedly recommend this game as it is easy for the novice and provides the veteran with a welcome change from the limited uninspired text-only adventures. A scoring system (mine is 77.5%) allows for friendly competition. At £14.95 it is very good value.

Chess is one of the oldest table-top games, but fantasy role playing (frp) is among the more recent. Its computer equivalent is adventure gaming, and here The Hobbit has been acclaimed as state of the art.

The Hobbit goes much further than most adventures in allowing for the human elements of frp. Input is in Inglish, using simple sentences rather than the more usual two-word commands. Characters have a semblance of independent life too as they wander about the landscape, and you can even converse with them. The aim is to locate a realistic country within the Spectrum.

To do all this in 48K is impressive. It also provides simple but effective graphics, but sensibly only on first encountering a scene, or when requested. The documentation is good, and the inclusion of Tolkien's novel adds to its scope.

After which it seems churlish to criticise, but for me The Hobbit failed to live up to its reputation. The independence of the characters was too obviously random. Gandalf in particular wanders aimlessly. As to conversing with them, the usual response is less than helpful, and sometimes totally illogical - a 'No' followed by the request being met!

Keyboard response can be a little strange, and with so much to type in a beep would have been useful. The program is not bug free either, though to be fair the booklet admits that this is to be expected in a work of this scale. I have found that the only way to continue the adventure did not appear as an option on one occasion!

The game also lacks the epic prose of the book, and I don't know that the vividness of more words wouldn't have been preferable to the pictures. I feel that The Hobbit suffers from falling between the two stools of tightly structured brain-teasing adventures and the open, human moderated frps. It is probably worth £14.95 despite this, because it is still addictive, but it left me wanting something better.

The Hobbit has clocked up huge sales on the Spectrum and has been converted on to three other home micros, as the game has established itself in the affections of millions of computer owners as the most popular adventure game ever. Strange as it may seem, though, as adventure games go it is not nearly as good as it could have been. Certainly, to experienced micro-adventurers, it is fairly easily mapped and solved, since it only offers 60 or so locations to be visited, which is pretty small beer by today's standards of cheap RAM. With available memory of the order of 40K in many micros, it is feasible to squeeze well over 200 locations into a game, producing a scenario which has possibilities to test the most seasoned adventurer.

The great attraction of the Hobbit lies not in its basic complexity, but in the novel (and very sophisticated) approach its writers have chosen with regard to its operation. To begin with, its recognition of input from the player is amazing, compared to all currently available adventures. Scorning the usual limitations of a two-word input, consisting of a verb-noun pair such as TAKE SWORD or GO EAST, The Hobbit can accept lengthy and quite complex sentences of up to 128 characters in length. It is a great annoyance to players to be given the response 'I can't do that' when a game lacks the vocabulary to carry out a simple instruction. The vocabulary of the Hobbit is high - three or four times that of the average, so the possibilities of action are correspondingly large. If the program does not recognise a word, it makes the fact clear, and differentiates between this and whether the desired action is possible. It is this quality of input analysis which explains the attraction of the game for first-timers: the Hobbit has been the first game played on a micro for many purchasers of the Spectrum, and very few will have been let down, as the game is so easy to get into, and enjoy, without being too easy.

There are two other great attractions of the Hobbit. Most obvious is that the game has popularised the use of graphic illustrations. Although not the first to use pictures of locations (the Apple has had several such adventures for some time) it was the first on a truly popular micro, and has generated a flock of imitators. In fact, there are less than 30 of the simplistic drawings, but they do add a certain something to the game, without wasting too much memory, and point to the future of Sinclair adventures, when a couple of hundred such pictures can be called from the Microdrive. Their only disadvantage in the Hobbit is that they cannot be turned off and when slowly drawn for the fiftieth time they can begin to grate on the patience.

The second novel feature is the apparent independence of action (named animaction by Melbourne) of the other characters in the game. Your co-adventurers, Thorin and Gandalf, as well as the elves, trolls, spiders and dragon encountered later, all seem to behave independently of you and each other, and so, if no entry is made from the keyboard, action will continue. Gandalf will flit in and out, Thorin will, at random, decide to help or hinder your efforts to escape from dungeons, and other inhabitants will appear to live out their lives as the game progresses. The object of the game is to regain the treasure of Smaug, the dragon, but to do so you will need to explore and map the locations, collecting swords, keys and magic rings, on the way. Everything about the game exudes class, from the stunning loading screen to the thorough documentation provided. This comprises a 16-page booklet which describes the game and outlines some of the allowed vocabulary and a copy of the original Tolkien book that the game is based upon. The latter is invaluable for hints, particularly concerning the trolls' clearing and the wine cellar - problems which would otherwise be very difficult to solve. As an added extra, not usually provided for in adventure games, it is very easy to send screen output to the ZX printer, to be re-read at leisure.

The Hobbit has set the standard for micro adventure games and although rather highly priced compared with most, its extreme elegance, it not its complexity, makes it well worth the outlay - a great starter for the novice adventurer and, hopefully, not the last Tolkien adventure on the Spectrum.

As The Hobbit loads, an illustrated title page is displayed, rather like the cover of a book.

Indeed, the book The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien is supplied as part of the package, and it is advisable to read this before playing, since the game follows the theme quite closely.

Another booklet describing how to play the game is provided and includes hints on the plot and how "Inglish", the command language works.

In play the screen is split in two. A "communication window" at the bottom scrolls independently from the "adventure window" above which gives details about the location and action.

On his first visit to a location the player is rewarded with a colour illustration of it.

The action is continuous, since The Hobbit is played in real time.

The creatures go about their business whilst the player is thinking.

Whilst head-scratching is in progress it is quite likely that more messages will appear on the screen, such as "Thorin goes east through the green door" or "Gandalf gives you the map". The publishers call this feature "Animaction", and it means there is no unique solution, the game being slightly different every time it is played.

A charming Adventure, requiring considerable time to complete.

The Hobbit comes from Melbourne House for the 48K Spectrum at £14.95.