Producer: Ariolasoft
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Mike Edwards

Realm of impossibility is a one or two player arcade adventure where the object of the game is to enter thirteen different dungeons and recover the items that are found therein. The front end of the program presents a menu when it has loaded and once the one or two player option and level of difficulty (1-4) has been selected, it's time to move to the dungeon selection screen. The thirteen dungeons are presented in a menu and when you begin play some of them are 'locked' - items from other dungeons have to be collected before you can enter them.

Select a dungeon, load it from tape and the quest can begin. The playing areas are presented in a scrolling 3D format and each occupies several screens. As can be expected the dungeons are far from empty, and a variety of unpleasant creatures live inside them including zombies, snakes, spiders and terrifying deadly balls all of which home in on your poor man. If one of these touches the character then a certain amount of energy is taken off his energy counter at the foot of screen. You only have one life to play with, so care has to be taken to avoid contact with the denizens of the dungeons wherever possible - and energy restoring objects can be collected to boost flagging spirits.

Exploring the dungeons is rewarding: useful items such as spells with which to confound the attacking nasties, and food, can be collected by running over them. Magic available includes Freeze, Protect and Confuse spells.

Some of the mazes have multi levels which are connected by ladders. Later levels have some very weird Esther-like constructions which look only a few metres high on one side, but drop hundreds of feet on the other, which can lead to an early death for the unwary adventurer. Once all the useful items in the current dungeon have been collected the player must work travel back to the starting location where a points bonus is given and the dungeon title screen displayed again. The quest can then be continued into another of the thirteen regions.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q up, A down, X left, C right
Joystick: Kempston, Interface II
Keyboard play: below average
Use of colour: very unimaginative, garish
Graphics: appalling, with horrendous attribute problems
Sound: a few clicks and burps
Skill levels: four
Screens: thirteen multi-screen dungeons

One thing I didn't like about Realm was the need to load in the different dungeons every time I wanted to play. There's nothing special about any of them, as far as I could see, so why weren't they all put into memory together? The graphics in the game are far too small and indistinct - just one character square, and they flicker awfully, so badly I suspect the movement routines are in BASIC. There's virtually no sound at all, and the gameplay is far too easy to appeal for long. I've enjoyed some of Ariolasoft's games recently, like Panzadrome and THINK!, but Realm of Impossibility is a major let-down.

I didn't really rate this game when I saw it a year ago on the Commodore and it has lost the few redeeming qualities it had in the conversion. I found this game totally unplayable and uncompelling. The graphics are so small that the only way you can tell your character from the rest of the mess wobbling around the screen is that it is a different colour - and it's still difficult! The screens are of ten garish and the use of 3D is misleading. The minimalistic instructions left me guessing what l was supposed to be achieving - and the onscreen prompts were sufficiently illegible to be worthless. What are Ariolasoft doing releasing a game like this in 1986?.

This piece of dated US software is one of the worst Spectrum games I've seen in a long while and it must be an embarrassment to any American programmer. The graphics are appalling with some of the worst attribute problems I've seen since 1982. The characters are tiny little things with no personality or animation - the sort of thing Spectrum users said farewell to yonks ago. Why there is need for a multiload system I just don't know - the game is by no means large and when compared with today's standards it just pales into insignificance. The instructions are poor and don't even tell you the keys! The only other thing I can say about this is steer well clear, if it's arcade adventures you're after then look elsewhere.

Ariolasoft
£7.95

There's nothing wrong with calling a game Realm of Impossibility, providing it's within the realms of playability. This isn't.

This is a maze game of sorts; the usual with lots of nasties that make directly for you and sap your strength. You have to fend them off by dropping crosses or using accumulated power for stronger spells, such as Freeze. What marks it out is the landscape.

Unlike most two player options the one in Realm of Impossibility is aimed at co-operation. It's a nice touch, and means that to improve your own best score you need to keep your opponent alive so that they can help you in turn.

Unlucky for some, maybe, there are thirteen of these caves, each needing to be loaded from the second side of the tap, and some remain locked and unloadable until the other levels have been conquered. Though multi-loads can be annoying this one means the game is big.

All of these features have made this a US top five hit and it's not difficult to see why. But - or should that be but - Ariolasoft's conversion is atrocious. As an object lesson in flickery sprites, bad control and the odd bug or three, it's excellent. Yes, it's just playable if you can put up with invisible (white on yellow) characters and severe steering problems. It's as if the programming had been done by people who knew nothing of the Spectrum's capabilities - and even then they'd done it in a hurry! This belongs in the Realm of the Turkey.

Publisher: Ariolasoft
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair

Just because a game has been a hit on the ol' Commode doesn't mean that the Spectrum version will be any good.

Ariolasoft's latest is a graphic example of how not to convert a best-seller - the graphics are awesome in their awfulness.

There is no plot to speak of, just a collection of mazes with grim sounding titles, such as The Erebian Vaults, The Abyss and - finally - Realm of Impossibility. There are 13 mazes and each one gets more hazardous with ladders down to the lower levels.

Each dungeon contains a limited range of appallingly animated entities which include zombies, poisonous spiders, rolling balls a la Raiders of the Lost Ark, and snakes which look more like sickly worms. All of them are flickering matchsticks.

The monsters are, however, fast and fairly intelligent. Your character's only weapons are a bunch of crosses which he plants in the ground to keep the creepies at bay. He will find a variety of spells, such as 'freeze' and 'confuse', in the labyrinthine corridors of hell, but selection and execution of those is difficult when you also have to dodge the monsters.

Ariolasoft describes the game as an 'action/strategy program.' The only strategy involved is dropping crosses and getting to a key at the limit of each dungeon. Until you get the key you will not be allowed to retrace your steps and exit the maze.

The game can also be played by two players - if you're sure you want to show your friends the embarrassing mistake you bought - and you can both enter the dungeons at the same time. The idea is to help each other rather than compete.

That 'strategy' makes a fairly easy game - even on the final level of difficulty - into a simple game. I managed - admittedly on my own - to get through most of the dungeons, even some of those which were locked - what are keys for after all?

You will need a good hour to get tired of this boring and repetitive game - 50 minutes to get through most of the dungeons but, first of all, 10 minutes at the start rolling on the floor in uncontrollable laughter at the graphics.