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A favourite theme of TV science fiction writers involves transporting you to an earlier age. Armed with your twentieth century sophistication you are supposed to hold your own against the kind of foe that dished out death-dealing blows to your forebears.

This five part epic with a crock of gold at the end is faithful to the theme. Work your way through the five and you face dinosaurs, surly Romans, ancient Britons, Nazis, and modern villains.

We tested the second part, where all roads are supposed to lead to Rome. Without the full-colour Eureka booklet with instructions and hints, twentieth-century sophistication was at a premium. But in the end (which invariably came sooner rather than later) all roads led to death: drowned at sea as a galley slave, crushed by a runaway horse while minding your own business on a street marked "Cave Equis", mauled by a lion, and slain in a struggle with a Roman solider.

The epic begins as a less-than-straightforward adventure; its vocabulary is limited but includes some Latin, and the game doesn't accept abbreviated commands. When it takes three cracks to kill Androcles you might well tire of typing ANDROCLES before you finish him off!

Only one road leads to Rome. The others take you into an endless grove of cypresses and to an implacable lion.

It's tempting to say that the adventure/epic is complicated enough to give you many hours of harmless pleasure. It's tempting to say that Virgil does the same. The difference is that Birgil didn't offer £25,000 to whoever completed his twelve books. The software is pricey and unexceptional, but adventures usually hold rewards of a different kind - you might well find that Eureka will do this for you.