Producer: Wrightchoice
Retail Price: £3.95
Author: A J Wright

Wrightchoice's Operation Stallion was reviewed in the June bumper section; this is the second part of the Operation trilogy. The series has a £500 cash prize at its end to help you recover from all those operations.

Now there's almost a bit of topicality here, give or take a few months - we have an election where the Tories and Labour are neck and neck, eyeball to eyeball, celebrity to newsreader, and you're so uncertain of your future under a new government you think you'll get up to some good old espionage to rig things in your favour.

I suppose an Iranian angle would have been even more topical, but Operation Berlin is set in the divided city with its wall (25 this year).

Berlin is close to those red Russkies, so you can expect some less-than-pleasant introductions to the KGB - and you might think it stands for Kill Great Britain once you see what they have in store for you.

As with Operation Stallion, you play John Blake, otherwise known as The Fixer, and your bosses, the PM and Charles Jenson (CJ), are the only ones to know that your job in Government Records is just a cover for your secret work.

Recently a leading nuclear scientist, Professor Wolff, made a breakthrough in his research into a more efficient nuclear-powered engine. His Isotope XIV project unearthed a type of uranium which could provide more power to the drive units in NATO K9 class submarines.

Two days ago Wolff flew to West Berlin for top-level talks with NATO staff - but never turned up. Double agents discovered he was kidnapped by the KGB at Tegal airport and smuggled to East Berlin.

Unfortunately for Wolff, but luckily for the Western powers, the professor was injured in a car crash in East Berlin in the KGB's haste to deliver him to their bosses. But if Wolff recovers from his injuries he might be persuaded to decode his ciphered plans, and armed with his research the Soviets could deliver a crushing blow to the West. The plans must be recovered.

Operation Berlin has two parts, one on each side of the cassette. As with Operation Stallion, the first part has you on the trail of your boss, the difference here being that you start the adventure at Heathrow. The first frame has a curious, almost full-screen drawing of a BUSY departure lounge - but the bar depicted in the picture is deserted! Perhaps the new licensing laws haven't come through yet...

As in Operation Stallion, the pictures are slowly drawn. Pressing a key scrolls most of them off. First item of the yarn is a newspaper, and you'd have to be illiterate to ignore its usefulness. The public address system lightens the mystery of why John Blake is at Heathrow Airport - he was, apparently, just about to board flight B347 to New York. Well, clearly our chap ain't going to make that flight, but instead you struggle through minor obstacles and take a taxi to the familiar building seen in Operation Stallion.

This building houses CJ's office and the 11 items to be taken on your mission proper in Part Two on the flip side of the cassette. But before I get ahead of myself, back to the check-in desk and a novel little routine: you have a natter with the check-in girl, with you only pressing a key to reveal each part of the conversation, which moves down a blank screen. It's a small touch but it's different. Another good effect is the fade-out of text, the words dissolving from the screen as you press a key.

Getting to Part Two isn't difficult - solving the problems in Part One becomes obvious once you've visited all the locations inside the airport. But there's one area in the bank which might prove difficult. The problem here is vocabulary, but the commands VERBS and NOUNS point the way with their lists of useful words (incidentally, these lists are different from those in Part Two).

This second part is similar to that of Operation Stallion - though Wrightchoice have laudably done away with incomprehensible lines using up moves, each of which takes one minute from the 24-hour limit on the mission.

Operation Berlin is a fine game with a neat outlook, and it's available from Wrightchoice at PO Box 100, Troon, Ayrshire KA10 6BD.

DIFFICULTY: not difficult
GRAPHICS: reasonable
PRESENTATION: rather good
INPUT FACILITY: verb/noun
RESPONSE: fast text, slow graphics

FAX BOX
Title: Operation Berlin
Publisher: Wrightchoice Software, PO Box 100, Troon, Ayrshire KA10 6BD, Scotland
Price: £3.95

This is the second in Wrightchoice's 'Operation' trilogy, where there's a prize of £500 to the first one to crack the lot, and I reckon it's even better than its predecessor, Operation Stallion.

You're still John Blake, aka 'The Fixer', and there's another mission ready to be faced by this mild-mannered civil servant with a surgical implant in his brain. This allows you to be killed instantly should things start to go wrong, the fingers on the button belonging to either the Prime Minister or your immediate boss, CJ ("I didn't get where I am today by putting my fingers on buttons.")

Programmer Andrew Wright really goes in for lengthy and convincing scene-setting, and the game is all the better for it, though it makes it hard to condense for reviewing. Basically it's to do with a Professor Wolff, who's developed a more efficient nuclear powered engine and who's apparently been kidnapped by the KGB when on a visit to Berlin. Just your luck that all this happens when you're sitting in the bar in the check-in hall of Heathrow Airport about to leave for New York.

The first of the two parts requires you to go to the information desk, call your office (for which you need change and the right phone number), avoid the pickpocket, cash a cheque to pay the taxi driver with, and know which destination to ask him to take you to. Then at your office you must get the file that CJ wants and eventually make it to your meeting with him on time before selecting the items you're going to take with you to Berlin in Part Two.

The graphics are beautifully done, as the mark indicates, and all the usual 'QUIP' features of RAM save, WORDS/PICTURES option, sound effects and so on are present. Some unfriendly features too, and Wrightchoice should really think a bit more about program design. When the taxi from the airport drops you outside the office block, you're told there are exits in all directions. Seems reasonable to try these, but every one leads to an instant death, only ENTER OFFICE BLOCK allows you to proceed. The RAM save helps a bit, but even with that you have to start from scratch, enter your anti-piracy security code and sit through the instruction screens again before being able to resume.

All in all, an excellent follow-up to a promising start, and at a more reasonable price too. With a free helpline service as well if you get stuck (the phone number's there in the program), and a prize of £500 to tempt you, what more could you ask?

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Wrightchoice Software (Mail Order from PO Box 100, 159 Welbeck Crescent, Troon, Ayrshire)
PRICE: £3.95

The sequel to Operation Stallion, this is the second of a trilogy offering a prize to the first person who solves all three. Most of the bugs that made Stallion such a chore to play are gone, making it much slicker.

Again, you play an agent allowed to operate outside the law. However this privilege does not come cheap. If you fail on any mission, a miniature bomb implanted in your skull will detonate...

You begin at Heathrow Airport, at the start of a vacation, but on reporting to the information desk, you learn something important has cropped up. You must report immediately to CJ, a man who is in constant contact with the Prime Minister.

An important scientist has been kidnapped. A quick air journey, and you're in Berlin, with the KGB tailing you. After a rendezvous with a double agent, the action moves across the Iron Curtain, via the notorious Checkpoint Charlie.

Slowly, you will manage to fit the puzzles together as you plunge deeper and deeper into the shadowy world of espionage, the premature termination of your existence being likely more than a few times! Wonderful things these RAM saves!