Romeo and Juliet
Avonsoft
1988

FAX BOX
Game: Romeo and Juliet (To be or not to be?)
Publisher: AvonSoft, 15 Montague Street, London APR 1ST
Price: £14.95
Release Date: July/August
Reviewer: Mike Gerrard

BARD GAMES

A YS Exclusive!

If I mention Shakespeare, how many of you will look bored? You Philistines! You could be missing out on an adventuring treat, too. A few years ago Oxford Digital produced an adventure game based on Shakespeare's Macbeth, a massive four-parter, but it only appeared on the Commie 64. Now an American company's getting in on the act and producing adventures based on other plays by the bard of Avon, and I've been given a sneak preview of the first of these, Romeo And Juliet. Female adventurers will be glad to know that you get to choose which character you play at the start of the game.

It'll be published in the UK by AvonSoft, a company specially set up to distribute the games, and for once Speccy owners... well, some Speccy owners... won't get left behind. A couple of programmers even now are busy bashing out a Spectrum version to enable a mass launch to be made across a range of machines in the summer. July is the target date, though we all know how often those dates tend to slip back.

The Spectrum version will (sob, sob) lack the mouth-watering graphics that machines like the ST can produce, and even this text-only version will be out of bounds to Plus 2 owners as the game takes up a massive 160K and needs constant disk access. I can't give too much away as I was only shown one section of the adventure, and was asked to wait for a finished version before doing a full review, but I did manage to persuade Rod Butcher of AvonSoft (thanks, Rod!) to switch on the printer while I played. The result shows you what a pathetic Romeo I made, but at least it gives you a flavour of the game's complexity.

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REVIEW BY: Mike Gerrard

Blurb: You are in a lane by the wall of Capulet's orchard, where the vines bang in abundance. The lane leads east and west. > Examine wall There's a balcony high above you. > Climb to balcony You're too heavy. All that pasta, you should take up joggin. > Eheek! I don't understant 'Eheek!' > Wait You wait. Juliet comes to the balcony. "O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?" > Serenade Juliet You sing three verses of the 'Bia a Bellos Bogs' and then several guards turn up demanding to know what you're singing in an orchard at this time of night. They take you to Capulet, Juliet's father. You are in a room in Capulet's house. The door is south. You can see: Guards, Capulet > South The guards won't let you. Capulet recognises you as being from the Montague family and threatens you. > Inventory You have a lamp, a bottle of wine, some bread, a bulging codpiece. > Say to Capulet, "Sorry" Capulet ignores you and is about to draw his sword when Juliet enters and gazes lovingly into your eyes. Hold, she says, would you kill the man that I love, father? Too true I would, he says. No daughter of mine is going to be seduced by a Montague. So that's what you were doing sniffing around in my orchard. He raises his sword, Juliet screams, a guard restrains her. > Stand still You show no fear and even rip open your shirt to bare your chest defiantly before Capulet's sword. He stares at you in amazement. That birthmark, he says. It cannot be... > Wait Capulet reveals a similar mark on his own chest, and tears open Juliet's clothing to show that she too possesses a birthmark just above her heaving breates. > Examine breasts As you lean across towards Juliet, her father, who was on the verge of forgiving you, instead takes his sword and smites you heavily, knocking the bottle from your grasp and the cod from your codpiece. You are dead. You scored 17% in 66 moves. Would you like to try again (Y/N)? > Enter maybe Thanks for playing. Have a nice day.