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If you've looked through Amsoft's lists recently, you may have wondered how nay software house could churn out the whole series of Roland games in such a short time.

Amsoft hit on the clever idea of marketing a lot of different games featuring small human characters (or in one case a flea) under the one house character.

This latest game is written by Gem Software, authors of Oh! Mummy and Spannerman.

The title suggests a time trip, and in fact there are ten time zones, each of which may be entered independently, so you don't have to complete one screen before starting the next. Each screen shows a well-detailed scene depicting some pseudo-historical characters and enough crystals in various awkward locations to test the best of arcade adventurers. The sole purpose of the game is to collect these, and if the crystal counter is anything to go by, there are over a thousand!

When you start playing the game, it is probably a good idea to visit as many of the locations as possible, before working out a strategy for collecting gems. Each of the ten main screens has several subsidiary ones.

I've come across 34 in the course of play and haven't got near to visiting them all. There are only three controls to the game: left, right and jump, but then it's nearly all a question of timing, anyway. There are some crystals that can only be reached from one direction and only carried off in another, and Roland will cover some pretty bizarre territory. A list of the ten starting titles may give a feel of the imagination used: Down At Dollis Brook, The Roman Fort, Njorl's Dragon-boat, Seen My Ballista? Jenny Goes Spinning, Missile Silo No. 47, After The Holocaust, Heli-Hunter, Station, West of Dome 9, The End Of Time.

The sheer variety of sprites takes some beating; everything from express trains to sarcophagi, pterodactyls to portcullises.

This is a true arcade adventure, in that you are often caught unawares by sections of crumbling ground and limited in where you may go by unseen barriers. In one or two places you have to overstep any visible support in order to make a particularly long jump. On the occasions when I failed to make it, I felt justifiably cheated in losing one of my ten lives. When entering a new screen, be prepared for some meanie attacking you immediately; only on the starting screens can you assume your entry point is safe.

The sound effects are adequate, although several members of my family (myself included) got rather irritated by the repeated rendition of: 'I Love To Go Awandering', which provides an unstoppable background to the game.

Overall though this is an excellent game, varied and imaginative with excellent use of graphics and at last showing something of the full potential of the CPC464. It will keep most people (apart from those who write into games mags to boast of completing Sabre Wulf in under 30 seconds) entertained for many hours.