Magic Mountain

Crash

Producer: Phipps Associates, 48K £4.95 Seek out the Scroll of Wisdom in this text adventure with location graphics. There is the usual assortment of items and monsters, battling puzzles and sudden deaths through inexperience. Reasonable graphics and medium fast response times. An average effort.

Read it at Crash - The Online Edition

Crash

Producer: Phipps Associates, 48K £4.95 Seek out the Scroll of Wisdom in this text adventure with location graphics. There is the usual assortment of items and monsters, battling puzzles and sudden deaths through inexperience. Reasonable graphics and medium fast response times. An average effort.

Crash

Producer: Phipps Associates, 48K £4.95 Seek out the Scroll of Wisdom in this text adventure with location graphics. There is the usual assortment of items and monsters, battling puzzles and sudden deaths through inexperience. Reasonable graphics and medium fast response times. An average effort.

ZX Computing

Documentation 4/5

Addictive Quality 3.5/5

Graphics 3/5

Programming Achievement 3.5/5

Lasting Appeal 3.5/5

Value 4/5

James Walsh

PRICE: £4.95 MEMORY REQUIRED: 48K Magic Mountain is the first of three adventure games reviewed this month. Phipps Associates have a tradition of producing good adventures, and this seems to be no exception. The Magic Mountain holds the ancient Scroll of Wisdom - a powerful document, much prized by the sorcerers. You must find it and survive to tell the tale! I have been fortunate to see the solution to this adventure, which reveals the relative complexity and intrigue which surrounds the game. Phipps Associates have incorporated a split screen display with graphics in the upper half, and text in the lower. This improves the enjoyment of the game no end, and should be a minimum requirement of an adventure. Out of the four adventures reviewed here, this is the most professionally written and produced, and by far the most interesting.

Personal Computer News

Lasting Appeal 4/5

Playability 4/5

Use Of Machine 4/5

Overall Value 5/5

Harriet Arnold 5/5

NAME: Magic Mountain SYSTEM: Spectrum 48K PRICE: £4.95 PUBLISHER: Phipps Associates, [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette OUTLETS: Mail order, computer shops UNDER THE HILL Magic Mountain has been played on the ZX81 for two years and has been restyled with new graphics for the Spectrum. OBJECTIVES A sort of alter-ego introduces himself as your eyes and limbs, but you've got all the initiative. Your task is to direct your nameless chum to the Scroll of Wisdom secreted in the mountain. This journey is fraught, of course, with hidden traps and perils and your progress in overcoming these challenges scores you points out of 1,600. While the program finishes loading, an impressively impregnable-looking mountain looms on the screen. During the game the colour graphics are, very neat, with split-screen pictures used for many locations. The first screen draws you a tunnel at the foot of the mountain in one half, while the other is used for you to conduct fast and fulsome conversations with the nameless chum. A wealth of caves of the hidden, musty and cold variety await you, along with all the other trappings of magic. IN PLAY A couple of pages of instructions and then you set off along what can become a weary, frustrating, baffling and very enjoyable trail. The exasperation was exacerbated when I'd got him through a door and was trying very, very hard to cut a bamboo cane. Whereupon, after much fruitless effort, be inquired kindly, but thoughtlessly. If I were trying to open the door! But then my short temper did get him killed by a dwarf. And my incorrect command to a genie saw the genie disappear, leaving behind a familiar and unpleasant smell. Death lies around many corners, and not usually as well deserved as in the dwarf incident. The red and black maze took much patience and ingenuity, while the nameless chum stayed cool as a cucumber and refused to understand 'panic'. VERDICT After much more of this sort of thing you'll find the way around and you'll learn what to collect when, and when to wear it. You'll find some clues obvious and others non-existent. The graphics are neat and distinct, the responses reasonably fast and the challenge is well, but not too well, within the bounds of possibility. Baffled from early on you may be, but not bored.

Your Computer

Overall 4/5

48K Spectrum Adventure £4.95 Phipps Associates Graphic adventure game along the lines of Hobbit. Familiar landscape of mountains, caves, tunnels, dungeons, rivers peopled with dwarves, lizards and spiders. Not as good as Hobbit but engrossing enough.