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Richard Shepherd achieved success with Urban Upstart and this game will do his reputation no harm at all. This huge adventure offers a hundred locations, many illustrated in multicolour mode.

The story line is original and most amusing. Professor Blowitovitz, a rather eccentric bloke, has moved into the manor at Upper Gumtree. With him he brings a large number of strange devices. After some time, bizarre things start to happen and finally the mad Professor delivers his ultimatum. Your task is to save the earth from his fiendish machinations. To assist and complicate your task, you encounter sundry people including the helpful Emma and the kleptomaniac Wally.

The standard of programming is very high with rapid graphics routines giving good quality pictures. Raster interrupts are used to give both text and pictures to good effect. The textual descriptions are nice and detailed and better than most I've seen. Many of the accepted techniques are used including a real time element - even the colours of the pictures change as night approaches. The interacting characters have a degree of artificial intelligence

The game is full of amusing problems and interesting ways to die. In all the atmosphere develops well and its easily holds one's interest. To make things less tedious, you can select the speed of printing, and disable the graphics. The parser is quite flexible and allows multiple commands.

Overall this is an excellent game at a very good price, well worth close examination.

M.W.