Master of Magic is an early RPG type game for the Speccy.
The story goes basically while you're out exploring a dark cave, you find a dark pool that catches your attention, then some grumpy old wizard called Thelric pulls you into it. You end up in Thelric's world where he teaches you a few magic spells gives you a quest to find the Lost Amulet of Immortality for him, and then sends you on your merry way.
Thelric being a bit of a mean awkward old git as well won't send you back to your own world until you've done this for him...
So the game starts by giving you some options for your controls, once you've got that sorted it then proceeds to tell you the proper version of the rather clichéd drivel I've written above here. Then when you've read the story the game starts. I remember way back when I was a kid my cousin had given me this game on a C90, with a few other games, so I had no instructions, and didn't really have a clue what I was doing. Fortunately the game isn't that hard to work out, and you get the story at the start, so that wasn't a problem for me. I didn't really like this game that much back then, but I persevered and got some enjoyment from it.
Fast forward about 30 years, and ironically I was better at this game as a youngster, or at least it seemed like I could progress quicker at least.
The game itself is not super hard to play, and it looks quite simple. You basically control a 4 pixel sized square, on a small rather oddly coloured white on magenta top down map. The rest of the screen is split into different sections the top right being a scroll which is where all the in game messages appear. The games commands are menu driven when fire is pressed, and the large red bar that goes through the centre of the screen is where your commands and options appear when you do so. The final part of the display is the bottom part of the screen decorated by 2 squiggly pole things with skulls on top on either side. Graphical representations of nearby objects, enemies, or anything else of interest appears in this section of the screen.
Sonically the game doesn't really have much, the one sound you'll mostly hear is the crunchy noises of the enemies hitting you.
The game is quite difficult magic and health are limited, and not replenished often, the enemies brainlessly home in on your character almost zombie like, and continue to follow you until you trap them behind a wall, or kill them, spells miss quite often, and so on. The graphical representations of some things look good, and others are a bit hit and miss really. Attempting to use lots of colour for these images quite often makes them a bit garish to look at, and some of them are just plain ugly.
This particular passage from the instructions amuses me no end though "This joystick or keyboard controlled Menu Driven Adventure enables
you to realistically play the role of the hero. Escape from the Mystical Underworld".
Hmm yes indeed, oh how our imaginations were much more powerful back in the 80's hahaha!
Anyway the game isn't completely terrible, but it barely passes as what's called an RPG really. It's more of a graphical adventure, but back then this was one of the few available "RPG" experiences available. Like I said I never paid for my copy back in the 80's, but the £2.99 asking price was reasonable for the time the game was released.
So there we have it, not a totally crap game, but all in all not really a great one either...
