Producer: Silversoft
Retail Price: £7.95
Language: Quill, Illustrator and Patch
Author: Fergus McNeill

When does a cult become a bandwagon? The cult was Bored of the Rings and when everyone was aboard it rolled its way up the charts as a bandwagon. The thing is now, does the bandwagon roll on with Robin of Sherlock or does it hit the rut of consumer resistance? Only time will tell, but have a read of this to see what Delta 4 have come up with this time.

Bored of the Rings plagiarised Tolkien much more than the Harvard Lampoon book of the same name, so it would be reasonable to assume that much of its success was due to the instant familiarity this association provided. Robin of Sherlock (surprise, surprise) borrows much from Robin of Sherwood by Adventure International, and Sherlock, the awe-inspiring program devised by Melbourne House. Hence the familiarity factor won't be as great, and this program will have to make it on the strength of being a follow up to a highly successful chart game.

Your quest is set into three parts. You can move freely from one part of the adventure to another along with anything you happen to be carrying. The program accepts long-winded entries such as LEAN OVER AND KISS MARION or the speedier KISS MARION (in other words the program only looks for the second example which makes you wonder what all this complex sentence input lark is all about). Dialogue with characters in the game begins with TALK TO followed by TELL ME ABOUT YOUR ALIBI etc. (this phrase is borrowed from Sherlock in case you hadn't twigged). A very useful feature is the RAM SAVE and RAM LOAD which saves your current status in memory and returns you to the position respectively. GRAPHICS ON and OFF completes the competent and impressive range of facilities on the program. (OK these are Patch features but they are still impressive).

Playing the game is much as you'd expect. The first game of the three has you wondering around a forest which in places looks remarkably similar to the one in Robin of Sherwood. Much amusement must be derived from the stock sounds of trains passing and phones ringing (it's for you hoof) as some of the humour is threadbare or esoteric (was that a joke or wasn't it...). I admit there is something inherently satisfying about cracking in jokes among a select gathering of like-minded friends but a commercial program must surely have a broader appeal. This is not to decry the effort expended in composing those jokes in the games which are genuinely amusing, as there are many such examples.

Humorous games are notoriously difficult to review. There's the problem of deciding just how universally funny the jokes are. Also, how much does the humour cover deficiencies in programming technique. What can be said of Robin of Sherlock is that it will appeal to that age group which can play adventures and comprehend zany humour. Judging by the success of Bored of the Rings there are many who both enjoy adventures and seek this kind of amusement.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: about as difficult to get into as a Marillion LP
Graphics: nice
Presentation: well turned out
Input facility: a little beyond verb/noun
Response: fast

Silversoft
£7.95

Thou art Robin of Sherlock in yon Sherwood Forest - there thou shalt find a dead Doctor Watson, a pot of vaseline and Maid Marian's clothes! Go forth and solve the many mysteries that have brought chaos to this realm.

Yessir, it's a cracker! Well written, with some very neat touches (considering it was written with the Quill), excellent graphics, and a tremendous sense of humour. Authors Jester and Desperado have come up with a brilliantly funny game that extracts the Michael out of both Sherlock and Robin of Sherwood.

Here in Sherwood Forest you'll find your merry men, Maid Marian (who's always ready for a quick cuddle), Friar Gorbachetnik (who eats so much he explodes), and the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City of Huddersfield. And if that's not enough for you, there's even a Kentucky Fried Squirrel take-away, a railway station, and a portable phone. And it comes with brill sound - when did you last hear your Speccy chugging into a station.

As well as a dead Doctor Watson, the Smurphs are up to something dirty, and there's a hideous conspiracy involving candles and vaseline! There's also a hideous bug. Typing GO WINDOW - or BREAK WINDOW for that matter, get's the message SWEAR NOT followed by a system reset.

Robin of Sherlock's a hoot if you want something different. You can talk to the characters (unusual for a Quilled game), listen to them talking amongst themselves, and do a RAMsave if things look tricky. Go for it, and avoid the fried squirrels at all costs.

RICHARD PRICE SEARCHES FOR A GENUINE HERO...

In the pages of a dusty book.

Judging by some of the mail I get, it seems that many adventurers think that game reviewers possess some form of magical amulet to help them solve any and every adventure without so much as a drop of perspiration. Not so. Like everyone else I've wasted hours, sometimes days, locked in cells, stuck in wells or straddled across some vertiginous chasm waiting for the stroke of genius that will get me home safe with the treasure, or the breathtakingly lovely princess. Verily the sweat has poured forth on those occasions.

There's quite a lot of help around if you investigate. Naturally, you will first write to the Fat One at the Ogre. His Vastness' drinking habits put him in touch with many rumours and tips. Companies are surprisingly helpful and many provide help sheets - but remember, they won't give complete solutions.

Level 9, Artic, Incentive, Adventure International and many others give help, though some may charge for booklets which list problems in more than one of their games.

Modem users can access the accumulated knowledge of many dedicated players on Prestel Clubspot 810. There are pages giving hints on specific games and a large section for those seeking help.

I've also been sent a mailshot from the Adventurers Club - 64c Menelik Road, London NW2 3RH. 01-794-1261. They offer help, newsletters, discounted games and a telephone helpline. The subscription fee is £10.95 for those living in the UK.

So, to business. Movie spin-offs are big business these days and it's often difficult for programmers to produce games of a film or TV series without causing pain to those punters who've already formed a clear view of the fantasy or storyline. Disappointed players of The Tripods game will know what I mean.

ROBIN OF SHERLOCK
Publisher: Silversoft
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K

Well, here it is... the next delightfully demented offering from the fervid and fertile imaginings of Fergus McNeill and Co, only begetters of the already justly infamous Bored of the Rings.

First take Sherlock Holmes, dress him in Lincoln green and plonk him down in Sherwood forest with a cordless phone, a plastic bow and a long dark sword called Albino. Then take liberal helpings of stubble-chinned transvestite nuns, mafiosi Smurphs, Merry Men, the Three Bears in a hanging mood, the Wizard of Oz and assorted cabbies and villains... not forgetting Hurn the Hunter whose major interest is collecting sheds and stuff to go in them. Now throw in a lot of trees, a railway station and a few public conveniences, a Kentucky Fried Squirrel franchise and the odd mystical hill and Druids' Circle. Et voila! You now have a rough idea of the recipe for Robin of Sherlock, the latest Quilled adventure from Delta Four.

The game uses the full resources of Gilsoft's adventure system and features newer, faster, split-screen graphics for a large number of locations, sound effects... the damn phone keeps ringing, either with wrong numbers or Lestrade's mother hurling abuse... and the useful RAMsave and RAMload to store a position without using the tape recorder. Input and response are fast and friendly with a wealth of zany detail.

What's it all about? it's hard to find a place to start! Being a medieval freedom-fighting detective is a tough number. There are numerous crimes to solve... who killed dead Watson, who kidnapped Toto from the venomous brat Dorothy, why are the nuns running some heavy racket involving recycled Smurphs sold as garden gnomes, and who nicked the cabbies' hansom?

Then again what does the Godfather Smurph do behind his protective screen of minders, and why does Hurn rip off people's gear and store it in vast garden sheds scattered around Sherwood? Phew, and that's only a starter. Oh, and who put the laxative in the Three Bears' porridge? That's quite an easy one really because you arrive at their cottage to find them putting up a gallows to lynch Goldilox.

The characters can be interrogated and will all have some crummy alibi or excuse for their actions. The descriptions are funny - hilarious at times - and the examine command produces a vast amount of daft detail. As in Bored you can carry enormous quantities of objects, most of them utterly improbable but useful at some point. If you remember to collect the Kentucky Fried Squrrel barf-bag hat from the restaurant in part one you may find it very useful when trying to enter Nottingham Castle. But what can I do with the electric carving knife and can I use the 'mystic, ancient and out of order coffee machine set into a great sausage shaped obelisk' inside the stone circle?

The game is in three parts, each continuing the map of Sherwood and its surroundings. That means more than 200 locations to explore and vast swathes of text to enjoy. Robin of Sherlock seems much more detailed than Bored and really benefits from the recent improvements to the Quill system. There is always something to explore, plenty of crazed action - watch portly Friar Gorbachetnik explode after his 31st venisonburger - and the game is thoroughly playable and engaging.

I am utterly unashamed about awarding this game a Classic rating. It is knockabout, loopy farce of the best kind with a pace and zip about it that leaves 90 per cent of other games miles behind. Absolutely smashing!

SUPPLIER: Silversoft/Delta 4
MACHINE: Spectrum 48k cassette
PRICE: £7.95

The plot of the latest game from those oddballs who brought you Bored of the Rings features a collection of literary and fantasy figures you all know and love. There's Robin of Sherwood, Sherlock, The Wizard of Oz - plus lots of bizarre items linked to the Smurfs and British Telecom. The object initially appears to be to find Dorothy's dog, Toto, from the Oz story and return him to his owner.

After a short time though, you find yourself investigating a decidedly shady operation involving the nearby monastery and the Godfather Smurf!

The Smurfs are facing a fate almost as awful as being turned into take-aways - like the sorrowful local squirrels! As for the exploding Friar. he's a complete mystery!

Graphics and text are presented on screen at the same time, but something which I found strange is that there is no picture for the first location, or indeed, quite a few locations in the initial stages. While it is certainly acceptable for some locations to be pictureless, there should be something more exciting to grab the player's interest at the outset.

The narrative is all in the past tense; "Robin was standing on ..." and "This was done" (after GET, DROP, etc.)

It's a little off-putting at first, though after a while it seems a much more logical way to do things, instead of giving the impression of freezing time after every move. "Robin noticed a lighter" is more natural than "You see a lighter."

Descriptions are quite well written, though at times the "jokes" seem to be thrust down your throat in rapid succession.

Apart from this, Robin is a very entertaining set of programs, with reasonable graphics and good descriptions.