Producer: US Gold
Retail Price: £9.95
Author: KAOS

Now if you think Oz is a rather down to earth character from an ITV comedy show, then this software is not aimed at you. No, it is aimed at a younger audience, who, enthralled by tales of the original (starring Greta Garbo… errr, that can't be right err... Elizabeth Taylor, well, someone incredibly famous) from their mums, rushed out to see the recent remake starring someone equally unforgettable. It all began with an Elton John album entitled 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' which was so good (not to mention long) that a chap who worked at Disneyland, called Walter, thought he'd base a film around the album. That's where Shirley Temple and Zena Ravioli (her stuntgirl) came in, child pawns pushed forward in the limelight totally unsuspecting the deeper meanings to the Bernie Taupin lyrics of the filmscores; hence its cult following. (Facts courteousy of the YTS information bureau).

Now, as I've said, this one is for the kids, which should be obvious to anyone who looks at the cover as it has KIDS! plastered all over it. Generally the program works very well for its intended audience, with the need for text input replaced by a menu bar accessed by pressing ENTER when the SPACE key has highlighted the option required. Slightly more clever is the way objects in the pictures can be highlighted with the SPACE key. The main options are LOOK, TALK, SEARCH, GET, LIST, and LEAVE.

LOOK is really very effective and gives the young varmint playing the game a full low down on what the SPACE key has highlighted right there up on the screen. For example the first screen only tells you that you are in the farm yard looking for Billina. But using LOOK we see that this scene has much to offer and teach us. There is Aunt Em, some good white hens which lay their eggs every day, and (after SEARCHing the wooden coop) Billina, which is a beautiful golden coloured hen, which hasn't laid an egg for ages. If she can't provide the eggs for breakfast then she'll end up providing the meat for supper. (And this is where Colonel Saunders, head of the US Allied forces, got his idea for naming his fast foods, after the state where Dorothy in the film loses her marbles - YTS Info Service).

TALK is another useful command where you can while away many happy moments conversing (with various degrees of success) with the various straw-headed flower pots you get in these kind of stories and thereby learn much about your quest and the routes you should follow (sadly, the Yellow Brick Road, like a present day M1 has long ago cracked up and you'll soon meet diversion signs). LIST leads onto the sub-options of DROP and USE.

I have one major complaint to level at this program so let's get it over with here: some of the printing is bugged with print split at line ends and some lines begin with full stops. Now if you consider the age group this game is aimed at these errors take on quite some significance.

Anyway, let's finish this one with the official version of the story, to rubbish all that disinformation from the YTS Info Service.

You find it difficult to sleep. All you can think about is Oz. The wonderful world of Oz. The Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow. All your friends from magical Oz. where anything can happen if you want it badly enough. 'Oh, why did I wear the magic Ruby Slippers and wish to be home in Kansas?', you think quietly to yourself. If only you could find those slippers and wish yourself back to Oz. But every day, the same, you search in vain. 'Kansas', you say to yourself. It's not quite as exciting here on the farm as it was in Oz. You can't even mention the word 'Oz' without making your Aunt Em and Uncle Henry upset and angry. But something is wrong in Oz. You know it. Today is going to be different, though, you are going to find a way to Return to Oz.

Don't know about you, but I preferred the YTS Info Service version.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: not all child's play
Graphics: attractive
Presentation: very good
Input facility: menu system
Response: fast

FAX BOX
Title: Return to Oz
Publisher: Kids/US Gold
Price: £7.95

Ding-dong, the witch is dead...but that didn't stop Walt Disney making a sequel to the classic film, The Wizard Of Oz, now turned into a graphic adventure on US Gold's new 'Kids' software label. It requires no text input from you whatsoever, just the ability to read and cope with the use of three keys on the keyboard. The options available to you at any location are always LOOK/TALK/SEARCH/GET/LIST/LEAVE. Pressing SPACE highlights each option in turn, ENTER selects an option and CAPS SHIFT acts as a cancellation key should those grubby little fingers slip. The only option that probably needs further explanation is LIST, which shows you everything that you're carrying and gives you a sub-menu allowing you to DROP something, USE something, or return to the main menu.

Your own return to Oz is the first aim of the game, as something tells you that the friends you left behind there (like the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow) are in some kind of trouble. You need to find your red slippers to transport you to Oz, then sort out the trouble when you get there.

Each location is depicted in rather disappointing simple graphics, with the text above and options beneath. You can only select an option if it's actually relevant to the people or objects in the picture. For instance, you begin in the farmyard with Aunt Em and a few hens and chickens. Selecting TALK will cause Aunt Em to flash (so to speak) as she's the only one you can talk to there, while LOOK or SEARCH will have different items flashing. Searching will uncover any hidden items, allowing you to GET them if you wish. Solving the small problems you come across is done by using the objects in your inventory, and if an object is of use in a particular place then it will flash - no flash means you've got nothing that's useful and you need worry no further.

This does tend to make problem solving rather easy, the only thing you really have to do is make sure you've used all the options in each location, some of them twice. To LEAVE a location isn't simply a case of automatically moving on to the next one, as the various exits available will also flash in turn, and a simple map will need to be kept as you move about.

This is a difficult game to assess, as an adult will speed through with no trouble at all, but then it isn't aimed at adults. I've a feeling, though, that younger children will find the 'simple' approach to adventures not quite as simple as all that: sometimes it takes several presses of the SPACE key to make the flashing indicator move on to a second or third object in a picture, and that could cause confusion. It's also a shame that the layout of text on the screen hasn't been properly done either, with stray commas and full-stops wrapping round onto separate lines. There's fun to be had from the program for fans of the magical land of Lions and tin men, but I think 'kids' deserve better than this.

US Gold
£7.95

Yet another spin off from a film title and no it's not about going back to Australia, but rather it involves that magical land of Yellow Brick Roads, Emerald Cities and the Wicked Witch of the West. Some time has passed since your first visit and you are desperate to return to see your friends, especially as you have a feeling that all is not quite as it should be with the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. The problem is, Aunt Em wants you to stay firmly put in Kansas and doesn't like you even mentioning Oz.

The game is a menu driven graphic adventure that is designed to appeal especially to young children. There is nothing to type in apart from your name at the beginning and everything is controlled by just three keys - space to highlight a particular option from the menu, enter to select that option and shift to return to the main menu. There are six main options to choose from; Look, Talk, Search, Get, List and Leave. The list option (Inventory) is further subdivided into Quit, Drop and Use. When you select an option, all the relevant items on the screen are highlighted and again, the space bar switches between them.

The main problem with the game is that the graphics are truly awful. Pictures of what you have found are small and not easily distinguished and items or areas that are supposedly highlighted remain indistinct and wishy-washy. There are also difficulties in using the space bar to highlight different objects but this may be a peculiarity of my rubber keyboard. Certainly, I found that I had to press the keys up to half a dozen times before the next item was highlighted and it would be all too easy to dismiss something as not significant because you couldn't select it.

The game is designed to make adventuring easy, but I found that it had just the opposite effect and my frustration increased considerably, the longer I played. As for the story, it follows the film closely but I think that you would have to be a real fan of the film to get much fun out of the game. One final quibble. All over the packaging are notes crediting the Walt Disney organisation who produced the film but there is not a single mention of L. Frank Baum the original author. Take my advice and go and read the book instead.