Producer: Ram Jam Corporation
Retail Price: £9.99

I often choose to begin a review with a few lines telling you what I know about the company and the game in question. Due to a predilection for untidiness I have misplaced the literature concerning this game. What I do know of the company is contentious. They were suspected of shady dealings and political intrigue in South America and, becoming unstuck when the country's ruling junta came to a sticky end exposing what lay behind a thick skein of secrecy, were heavily implicated in a honeycomb of leaky, transparent coverups, diplomatic raspberries, power-besotted gooseberries and giving a whole polysaccharide of embezzled condiments to the ruling party, The Preservatives.

So much for the artificial flavouring, let's add some colour (or never mind the company, what about the game)? If I said I once knew a posh chap whose name was Valkyrie, then surely you would fear the worst - that this review will amount to no more than the sort of journalistic licence flaunted in the name of Colour Supplement entertainment. No, instead to that tardis-like tome, the Collins English Dictionary -

VALKYRIE, Walkyrie or Valkyr, n. Norse myth, any of the beautiful maidens who serve Odin and ride over the battlefields to claim the dead heroes by him or Tyr and take them to Valhalla.

Nothing of interest here...... I wonder if it's the seventeen?

If you're wondering what all the verbiage is, it's what I wrote while waiting for this game to load again. I wanted to know what happens if you say YES twice in succession to the question, 'For our records, please indicate if this is a pirate copy: Ans Y or N. ', which appears on a blank screen once the game has loaded. You might wonder why I did not answer NO, after all, it is quite a legal and respectable review copy. Ah yes, but you see, as a reviewer I must explore every avenue for the prosaic, and occasionally the unexpected, as in this case. So much for my whimsical aberration, let's get down to this review and join me as I discover the game from scratch (because of the aforementioned predilection).

'You are in the bar of the Glitz Hotel. It's dimly lit and smoky. There is an attractive girl at the bar.' So begin Valkyrie 17, and a reasonably pleasant introduction it is too. Heading east I enter the ladies powder room and rather than do the honourable thing and turn right back, I stay just long enough to see the shower 'might be refreshing after a strenuous morning spent skiing.' Skiing eh-umm?

To the north and east I find some snowshoes in the broom cupboard. Skiing; snowshoes? I suppose I must be in a skiing resort. At the entrance to the hotel the Manager won't let me leave until I've paid up, so I turn back towards the reception desk where the telephone never stops ringing - obviously a peculiar hotel. On one occasion I answer the phone to learn 'The Red Kipper flies at midnight'. I can only assume the bad line distorted the call from a local takeaway trying to entice customers away from the dubious hotel service -'The Red Kipper fries till midnight'.

At reception I try to PAY BILL but I am unfamiliar with the currency (199 Grotniks?) and have long since dispensed with credit cards having lost all in a game of Snap. So what am Ito do? Stuck in a hotel where the 'chambermaid appears and asks politely 'if you've been standing in a broom cupboard. She dusts you down and leaves'. So what if I had been standing in a broom cupboard? I wonder if I could slip out but no, the manager will not let me leave until I've paid the bill. In my fury I attack him; 'in a blur of motion he dispatches a single blow to your solar plexus. As you fall, you notice he is wearing a black belt'.

Colourful, relatively easy, and very witty, Valkyrie 17 is a joy to play and features many good quality graphics. Its striking quality is the amazing depth of the humorous replies to whatever input you might come up with. The input routine is very certain and sure, and different tones of beeps draw your attention to when the program is ready for your input, or to an item present or a comment made. The layout of the screen is very attractive with a small 17 adjacent to your last input. During input type is spaced out for emphasis and condenses to normal spacing once entered. I didn't want to run through this game in detail as I so often do, otherwise, when you come to play it, you would meet a string of jokes you've heard before, and many are far too good to ruin. If you are one of the many who like their adventures served up with some humour, then this is one for you.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: quite easy
Graphics: on about half the locations, quite good
Presentation: very good
Input facility: good, limited to verb/noun
Response: a touch sluggish
Special features: random element, events can change

Most adventures tell you somewhere near the beginning of the game itself exactly what you're expected to do - Valkyrie 17, of course, has to be the exception!

The box the game comes in reveals that you've discovered some answerphone messages (found on side two of the tape) that tell you that Valkyrie 17 is active again (?). Further discovery comes from wading through the dossier of plans, memos, etc, that accompany the tape; you find out that Valkyrie 17 is actually an experimental Nazi laser weapon from the Second World War.

OK, you're now ready to start the game and only your experience and cunning as a secret agent will get you through. As soon as you start playing, though, any thoughts of seriousness go straight out of the window - the game is very funny, especially its responses to most 'stupid' commands. Technically, the game's not particularly out of the ordinary, with simple verb/noun entry of most commands.

Valkyrie 17 has been written so as to give the player as much freedom as possible; so once you've overcome some initial problems you can go almost anywhere you like! This, to my mind, is the real charm of the game. All but one or two of the problems to be overcome are completely logical; on one occasion, the solution to one of them was too obvious for me to work out and I'm indebted to Trevor Toms of the Ram Jam Corporation for putting me out of my misery.

To finish up, Valkyrie 17 is a very well thought out program, with very nice graphics and a wonderful sense of humour.

The price of £9.99 is on a par with other adventures and I think it easily justifies the cost. Highly recommended.

ESCAPE FROM THE MODERN WORLD

Richard Price look at some contemporary adventures.

When you are on the hunt for a new adventure what is it you are looking for?

You will naturally expect the game to have playability - that combination of technical factors most of us take for granted when we buy commercial programs. You have a right to demand a decent vocabulary, good response time and a flexible interpreter which comes across with some sort of personality during play. You will assume the writers have devised carefully designed puzzles set into a coherent structure.

Those are the requirements of any good game but it is fair to say that an adventure's success and the satisfaction it gives you will be decided mainly by the quality of its plot and the atmosphere it generates.

All of us want an escape into other worlds at times to savour the pleasure of being someone or somewhere else. That fantasy is the core of the appeal of computer adventure. Fantasy, though, is fragile and, whether you prefer herioc, modern or futuristic scenarios, the setting you make your journey in must hold your belief right to the end.

Quite often people will say that fantasy works by suspending your disbelief. Tolkein himself did not think that was a convincing explanation of the way the mind handles fantasy. In Tree and Leaf, his short work about fairy stories, he put forward the idea that the writer - or games designer in our case - creates a 'secondary' world which your mind can enter. Once inside it you believe the general setting, the characters and action are true - meaning that they all obey the proper laws of their own world. The spell held over you may well be broken by some jarring intrusion from the real world or simply because the characters behave in a way that is out of kilter with the logic of their surroundings.

Far too many programs feature plots which, for instance, ask you to rescue a princess, find the scattered bits of some talisman or simply slash your way through a monster-infested cave riddled with rising damp and littered with treasures which no sorcerer in his right mind would leave lying around.

You may not be too happy to be regularly cast as a Conan-clone whose fist is bigger than his brain. That must be desperately aggravating for female adventurers who are expected to undergo a mental sex-change before powering up their Spectrums. If software companies are going to survive then they had better start looking for games which will appeal to a much wider public than is currently the case.

To be fair, there is a growing variety of styles and plots in the adventure genre but games that use real story lines are still pretty thin on the ground. The concept of bookware, though, seems to be taking off. Creating computer implementations of successful stories has some obvious advantages as the books have already proved that their 'secondary' worlds can hold people's attention and imagination. It still does not mean that the program will necessarily match up to the excitement or invention of the original but if the programmers are sensitive about the adaptation there is a chance of a good fit. Of course, the memory size of home micros also imposes rigid boundaries and limitations.

If you are an amateur programmer searching for a theme there is nothing to stop you turning your favourite pulp fiction into an adventure for home consumption.

If you are bored with magic and monsters history can provide equally exciting themes. Your heroine or hero could attempt to infiltrate the lair of the Old Man of the Mountains, the original master of the feared Assassins at the time of the Crusades. Deserts, strange nomads, wild mountains and grim fortresses guarded by fanatical killers all have their place in this adventure.

There are some programs which meet all or most of the criteria for successful secondary worlds and yet mirror the preoccupations and paranoias of our own times. They reflect different angles of life and often carry some sharp social comment.

Urban Upstart from Richard Shepherd Software depicts the grim emptiness of inner-city life. Imagine any decaying ex-industrial town in Britain and you will have an idea of what it is like to live in Scarthorpe. No jobs, no money, nothing to do. No one will wander the streets. Thuggish skinheads and paranoid police rule here.

You must comb the town and find the means to escape. Your own character is pretty suspect and not above theft and fraud to raise much-needed cash. The mean streets are depicted in location graphics but the format is traditional text adventure and tricky at that.

The game may not seem like escapism and it is not difficult to recognise parallels with Cut Throat Alley or Grime Street. Definitely a slice of social realism with a gritty, dangerous, feel to it, though not without flashes of humour.

If you are one of those gamesters who thinks adventures written on the Quill cannot match the real thing then Hampstead could provide a cure for your scepticism. The technical presentation may be defined by the utility but the subject matter and approach is new and genuinely funny.

There you are, stuck in your nasty smelly flat somewhere in the wilderness of north-west London, parked in front of 3-2-1 on the telly. The only way is up - so you think - and you nip out in search of the dole office to get your giro. Outside the back yard, gleaming in the sunlight, is a sign pointing to Hampstead. Nothing can stop you now, so you cross your personal Jordan and pedal towards the Promised Land only to find you cannot attain Hampstead simply by going there. You will have to change your style and your gear, read the right books and do the right things with the right people.

Not being totally stupid you will lie, cheat, even steal to get to this Nirvana of NW10 but you must avoid violence at all costs. The game is not merely about finding the right objects - it is also about attitudes as you must work out ways of making the correct deals. The answers are devious.

This is good situation comedy from Melbourne House and the game is attractively presented with a hilarious handbook. It is arguably one of the best Quilled adventures to date.

From this comfortable tweedy fantasy we descend into a shifting, threatening underworld of conspiracy, espionage and fear. A series of audio messages are recorded on your answering machine. Their growing urgency and the sound of a final shot leave you in no doubt - Valkyrie 17 is active again, a cell of neo-Nazis whose deadly tentacles stretch around the world.

Thanks to the dying gasps of your agent you know their ruthless leader is holed up in an exclusive Austrian skiing resort at the Glitz Hotel. Your job is to seek him out and neutralise him. Take care; one foolish move and you will find yourself face down in the snow rapidly becoming a member of the great majority.

The level of paranoia is pumped up by ringing phones which, if answered, threaten you and make it clear that your cover is already broken. Everything a good thriller needs is here - locked safes, half-overheard conversations, blood on the crisp snow of the piste.

Valkyrie 17 is produced by the Ram Jam Corporation, a new outfit, and features detailed atmospheric descriptions. The location graphics are interactive and will change to show the results of significant actions. No help is given and you are absolutely on your own in a race against danger.

Isolation and danger are also the major themes of System 15000 from AVS. This is no standard text adventure but it is definitely one of the most gripping and compulsive Spectrum games so far. A brief note informs you that Comdata Company has been ripped off for a cool million or more bucks in a computerised bank fraud. Lurking behind the heist are the mob, ominous and menacing. Your single lead is one phone number.

On loading you will find only the user screen of the 15000 network and the basic instructions on how to operate it. From that beginning you must penetrate the files of the other computers which use the net to uncover the twisting threads of the plot. The giant mainframes of the international banks are well protected against intruders and police data protection squads will shut the system down temporarily once they get a sniff of what you are up to. Stay cool and keep dialling - piece by piece you will edge your way towards the truth and attempt to restore the Comdata lost millions.

Your only input routines are phone numbers and an occasional cryptic note on the message board. There is no need to take on any role - this is you against the network in the here and now, deep in the loneliness of the long-distance hacker.

After hours of tracing leads you will find yourself cheering in triumph as you enter the files of the Reserve Manhattan Bank with its glittering stars and stipes logo or you will curse in frustration as yet another faceless machine informs you that your data is bad. You will begin to sense the network as very real, a vast jigsaw of numers, names and details. System 15000 is utterly absorbing and compelling and recalls the atmosphere of the BBC series Bird of Prey. Absolutely recommended.

Nifty first offering from Ram-Jam. A 'Fairly Secret Army' adventure that's not only devious but cloaked in a quite ludicrous sense of humour. Apparently Valkyrie 17, the Nazi's ultimate weapon has been reactivated! Information has been leaked into your ansaphone (the messages are on the back-side of the tape) and air tickets to Munich have been stuffed down your jockey shorts. Not surprisingly things begin move at a sprightly pace.

On my first mission, having transferred to the Hotel Glitz (y'know the one, it overlooks lake Bruntz), I found myself clad in black silk dress and blonde wig (just mind your own business, OK?), propositioned at the bar, molested by the hotel manager and endangered on a window ledge. Not a bad morning's work, I'm sure you'll agree.

Rather cleverly Ram-Jam have sated the market's irrational demand for graphics by alternating visuals with some highly detailed text (both of which appear in a window at the top of the screen), and there's a handy 'Save to Microdrive' option, which is a more than welcome innovation. Indeed, in many ways it's hard to fault this debut from Ram-Jam. Dorkslayers on the run from Orcs are unlikely to find a more entertaining adventure alternative. The Red Kipper flies at midnight, they tell me. Best catch this while you can.

MACHINE: Spectrum, Commodore 64
PRICE: £9.99

Both Artic and Richard Shepherd are well-known figures on the adventure scene, but this month is unusual because it not only sees the birth of a new software company, but one that has managed to bring out a very good adventure as its first release. If you haven't managed to get hold of Valkyrie 17 7 from Ramjam then I recommend that you do so - it's an excellently presented, well thought-out, text-and-graphics program available for both the Spectrum and Commodore 64 and distributed by Palace Software.

The game comes with a short booklet and die-cast metal badge. The tape has an audio track on one side that features some rather obscure phone-calls from an agent on the trail of a dangerous secret organisation (called Valkyrie 17 - hence the name of the game). The last phone call is cut short by what sounds like a gun shot.

Under normal circumstances that sort of introduction would be all the persuasion I'd need to give Valkyrie 17 a wide berth, but being an intrepid Wizard I loaded up the game and set off in an attempt to save the planet from world domination and revenge the death of my fellow agent.

The game is in the usual split-screen format that seems to have become almost an industry standard since The Hobbit. The graphics draw quickly and apart from being attractively designed also contain important clues to help you in your task. Not all objects present in each location are mentioned in the text, so close examination of the pictures is essential.

Input for the most part is two-word only, but you'll occasionally need to enter something a wee bit more complex and if you get it right the program will accept it. My only gripe here is that the game doesn't tell you which word it's having difficulty with, but there's a decent vocabulary so this isn't too much of a problem. The program highlights your inputs in an attractively redesigned character set, and the display as a whole is beautifully presented.

What really makes this game is the degree of realism involved. You start off in a hotel from which you must escape without paying your bill. This in itself involves careful exploration of the building and although there are only about 15 locations here you'll find an awful lot to do.

Once you've got out of the hotel, you find yourself confronted by the problems of deep snow, treacherous ski runs, and the need to find a couple of objects that appear only in the pictures and not in the text. Unfortunately you won't get any further without these, and although you can see them on the screen it may not be immediately obvious to everyone what to call them.

There are apparently over 100 locations, but I haven't yet explored all of them. Once you make it down the ski-slope you arrive in a small town. At this point the game shows one of its weaker points by killing you off quite unjustifiably if you happen to pay too much attention to a harmless looking fountain. The White Wizard does not believe that a fountain located in (presumably) the Swiss alps would be likely to harbour a shoal of man-eating piranhas. but... well, need I say more?

Apart from little niggles like this, RamJam have produced a very enjoyable game that has me impatiently awaiting their next release. If you fancy dicing with death and checking out the true significance of the phrase 'The Red Kipper Flies at Midnight' then pop out and fritter away £9.99 on Valkyrie 17 - it's worth every penny.

OPEN FLIGHT AT MIDNIGHT

MICRO: Spectrum 48K
PRICE: £9.99
FORMAT: Cassette
SUPPLIER: Palace Virgin Gold, 69 Flempton Road, London E10 7NL

Sally Glover takes on the Fourth Reich in Ram Jam's Valkyrie 17.

The summer of 1945 had the Nazi war-machine in its death throes. Desperately, the scientists of the Third Reich laboured to produce the super-weapons like the V2 rocket and the atom bomb which could snatch victory for Hitler's armies from the jaws of defeat. Fortunately, the allies were able to foil these plans with preemptive raids like those at Telemark and Peenemunde.

The full scale of German technology was only realised after the war when captured documents revealed just how close many of these terrible weapons were to operation.

Secret Nazi projects and treasures have often been the subject of novels and films but, to the best of my knowledge, Valkyrie 17 is the first computer adventure based on this type of scenario.

The packaging of the game is very striking and features the insignia of Valkyrie 17 in the black and red of the 'thousand year Reich'. This is reproduced inside the package in the form of a metal badge - which I thought was a nice touch to add realism and impress your friends etc.

It is clear that a great deal of thought has gone into the development of the game. This is very pleasing to see since many adventures with good potential are let down by lack of attention to detail - this certainly is NOT true of Valkyrie 17.

The written material accompanying the cassette is in the form of a confidential dossier, which contains several sheets of, apparently, essential information.

The first details German attempts to develop 'beam weapons' similar to the now familiar laser at a secret plant in the town of Rhinemunde. Just how close the Nazis were to success can be gauged from the report of a pilot who bombed Rhinemunde and saw "a searchlight so bright, it seemed to cut planes in half."

Further intelligence suggests that the group at Rhinemunde developing the weapon was headed by Ernst Reichsmuller and members were identifiable by their insignia - Valkyrie 17! A Waffen SS blueprint shows a gun-like electrical weapon bearing the legend 'Drakenfuer'.

Like many Nazi criminals, Reichsmuller escaped Allied justice but, together with his accomplice Heinrich, has been traced and followed by your agency - MI6.

This leads to the next dimension of this realistic game - a series of Ansaphone messages from an agent who has tracked Reichsmuller and his cronies across the globe. They plan to restore Valkyrie 17 to operation and found a new Reich. The last call is from a mid-European hotel and ends in a gunshot. Your agent's last words tell you your contact will identify himself by the words "The red kipper flies at midnight."

Now you are ready to load the 'A' side of the cassette and begin the game in earnest.

Already, though, you have been given much more information than is usual for most adventure games. The only companies I know of to produce anything so thorough are Level 9 and Infocom.

Level 9's background material is excellent but generally of limited use in the game itself. Infocom produce support material that can only be described as brilliant and which is often needed to get anywhere with the game at all. The details supplied with Valkyrie 17 seem closer to that supplied by Infocom - a point very much in their favour, as far as I am concerned. An obvious way to prevent or deter piracy is to produce items in the documentation necessary to playing the game which cannot be easily copied or reproduced by software thieves.

The game begins with you standing by the bar of the Hotel Glitz, next to a beautiful girl. There doesn't seem much incentive to leave but the girl is thirsty and you don't have a Grotnik to your name! The extent of your poverty becomes obvious if you try to leave the hotel but, for a secret agent of your experience, a little problem like that shouldn't hold you up for long. The skills of the masterspy often coincide with those of the burglar and every town has its shady characters - if you know where to look. Escape from the hotel is pretty easy, especially if you've played The Count.

Some locations have graphics and some are purely text. What I liked is that commands such as OPEN WINDOW produce the effect of the screen being redrawn to show an open window. The graphics are quickly drawn and very much a part of the game rather than memory consuming decoration. It is essential that you should examine all the pictures in detail and act on what you see as well as what you read. Text should be studied very carefully and you will note that, although all exits are generally given, this is not always so and a list of items in that location may or may not be.

Once outside the hotel things don't get any easier and the town, once you get to it, seems beautiful but deadly. There are quite a few red herrings or kippers even to catch you out.

The scenery includes views of Lake Bruntz, cable cars and pawnshops. Problems include brutal butchers, deadly piranha and hidden snipers! It pays to have several different SAVED positions so as to avoid having to start again from scratch since the adventure seems to require certain actions to be performed at certain times if progress is to be made.

Overall, Valkyrie 17 is a very "interactive" adventure which requires just about every sense except that of smell to play. I have spent many hours playing already and RamJam tell me I've completed about 10-15% of the adventure! The game is fun and I'm sure the unique and interesting plot will keep me at it until I've finished.

A final point worth noting is that the package includes a program to transfer the game to microdrive which greatly improves on the loading time of five to six minutes. I'm sure that we'll be hearing more from Ramjam - I for one look forward to Three Days in Carpathia.

Spectrum 48K
Ram Jam Corporation
Adventure
£9.95

A graphics text adventure tracking down Nazis who, as they are wont to do, are busy trying to take over the world. A few enigmatic clues are provided by the packing and a soundtrack on the cassette. Plenty of humour and terrible German accents.

RamJam distributed by Ariolasoft
£9.95

Ah, nostalgia. I first reviewed this game for Home Computing Weekly in 1984 and loved it, to quote: "One of the best adventures of the year - buy it!" Has it stood up to the test of time?

Before I answer that question, the plot. A series of garbled telephone messages (reproduced on the B-side of the cassette incidentally) reveal that Valkyrie 17, a hideous super-weapon developed by the Nazis, is active again. You fly out to the Hotel Blitz in Lake Bruntz, where your secret agent contact was murdered. Can you find and stop this deadly machine? Basically an espionage plot then, not amazingly original, but I cannot offhand think of a better executed one for the Spectrum.

At the hotel bar, where you start, is a girl who would "lot a trink, dollinsk". Nearby is the manager, who demands you pay your bill before leaving, and will use martial arts to persuade you if necessary. Answer the phone and you will be told "The Red Kipper Flies at Midnight". Search around a bit more and you'll find a wig and dress. Should you wear them? Do they suit you? When you escape the hotel, how do you descend the ski slope?

These are just a few of many confusing aspects to this wonderful, polished adventure. It has some graphics, which are fairly average by today's standards but still attractive.

What makes V17 so good however is the intelligent, lengthy and humorous text, and responses. Just a small example is this one. Searching around in an attempt to leave you find the dusty cupboard where the maid keeps her brooms. Having looked around inside, "A chambermaid appears and politely asks if you have been standing in the broom cupboard. She dusts you down and leaves". That sort of attention to detail and clever forethought is rarely seen in Spectrum adventures.

The vocabulary is friendly and your interest is maintained for a long time by a varied range of responses The problems are all logical, not obscure; perseverance and thought will ensure you complete the game eventually. The response time is a Utile sluggish, but not offputtingly so and certainly not as bad as in Lord Of The Rings. The game is also pleasantly atmospheric and well presented.

When first released, V17 came in a well designed box, with an information dossier and a free Valkyrie 17 badge; exactly what adventure packaging should be, but sadly not seen on the Speccy very often. The real shame is that Ariolasoft have done away with this, put it in an ordinary cassette box and squashed all the information into a fold out inlay. Also considering its age, I think this is a little overpriced.

But these points aside, V17 is great fun and remains one of my favourite Spectrum adventures. I have no reservations in awarding it a Monster Hit; can't wait for the sequel. Ironic really, that the best game I have reviewed for months is nearly two years old...

There's a group of ex-Nazis who call themselves Valkyrie 17 who, with the use of a super-weapon they are reconstructing, plan to re-establish the Reich and dominate the world.

You are an undercover agent, out to stop them, and have traced them as far as the Glitz Hotel, your last lead.

You find yourself in the bar, in the company of an attractive girl, but with no drink and no cash. Leaving the hotel is not straightforward, as the manager has no intention of letting you out of his sight until your bill is paid. But until you do, you cannot continue your search for Valkyrie.

A dossier of top secret documents is supplied with the package and the reverse side of the cassette has recordings of answerphone messages relating to the case - all designed to add to the realism.

Some locations have graphics which are very fast to display and react to the current situation. For example, if you open a window, then it will be redisplayed as open. A number of objects and other points of importance in the game are shown in the picture, without reference in the text, which scrolls underneath. It is therefore quite important to study the picture carefully before deciding what to do next.

Sound also enhances the game, with a tone announcing the completion of certain tasks and another tone sounding when the prompt is returned. Although the display is executed quickly, there is a pause before control is returned to the player, and the actual response time is a just tolerable five seconds.

This is the first game from a company called Ram Jam. Does the name mean that the Spectrum's memory is crammed full to overflowing? Valkyrie 17 is for the 48K Spectrum from the Ram Jam Corporation.