THE SPECTRUM ADVENTURER
Mike Gerrard
Duckworth £3.95

I'm not quite sure whether or not I agree with the idea of publishing complete solutions to adventure games. It takes the essential element of mystery out of a game if you know you only have to toddle along to WH Smith to learn all that has been baffling you. Perhaps it also reduces the sense of achievement felt by a player who finally cracks a game himself, knowing that people who have finished it are two a penny, having bought the whole solution.

On the other hand, I suppose people who have been genuinely frustrated for many months, do have a right to know the answers to the mysteries for which they have paid, and so to be put out of their misery.

From the point of view of the author and publisher of a game, I suppose it is all right for their secrets to be revealed when the game has been around a long while.

In The Spectrum Adventurer, Mike Gerrard provides 100% solutions, including complete maps, for four games: Valhalla, Snowball, Twin Kingdom Valley and Urban Upstart. For the latter three, the solutions are arranged as an index of problems, which are then looked up in the text that follows. Valhalla is presented in a slightly different format, with a fairly long introduction on the strategy to adopt, followed by a commented list of locations. All the maps appear as appendices at the back of the book.

As one would expect with Mike's name on the front cover, the book is impeccably written in an easy style, and represents good value to anyone who is irretrievably stuck in even one of the four games. If you are just mulling over a sticky problem though, my experience is that a full solution to hand is too much of a temptation, and even the most determined adventurer will make the feeblest excuses to himself to look up something that is temporarily stopping progress!

Still, I suppose it would make my life a bit easier.

BOOKS DO FURNISH A GAME

There are books, computer books and - increasingly - computer adventure books. John Conquest put on his lorgnettes and had a good squint at some latest examples of this rapidly-growing literary genre.

The Brothers Gerrard collaborated on THE ADVENTURER'S COMPANION (£3.95) which is a real bone of contention. This one is very straightforward - solutions, not hints, not suggestions, not clues, but 100%, full-frontal, explicit solutions to the problems of The Hobbit, Colossal Cave Adventure (a.k.a Adventure, a.k.a Adventures, a.k.a Colossal Cave), Adventureland and Pirate Adventure. Anybody who's solved any of these games the hard way would be justified in being pretty irritated by the idea of just looking up the answer, but the many people who've got themselves stuck in one will find it a godsend. Trouble is that to get the best value out of these games you'd have to use this book only as a last resort, which is asking for superhuman self-restraint. Personally I would have preferred a collection of hints, along the lines of Level 9's foxy but invaluable clue sheets, which help you without giving everything away, for a much wider range of games.

GERRARD BROS - PROBLEM SOLVERS

AUTHOR: Mike Gerrard, Peter Gerrard
PUBLISHER: Duckworth Home Computing
PRICE: £3.95

The Gerrard Brothers make a formidable team - writing almost without stop in such disparate and august organs as Popular Computing Weekly, Honey, The Daily Mail and Micro Adventurer, they form an adventure Mafia. Peter has an admirable series of "Exploring Adventures on the..." (fill in the dots with just about any micro that you can think of), although these two books are the first effort of brother Mike to appear in print.

The more interesting of the two, for the general reader, is Mike's solo effort. The Notebook contains 5 pages of "What is an Adventure", 11 pages of hints (such as type LOOK and EXAMINE at every available opportunity, map mazes and so on), and 11 pages of historical background. These sections are followed by a quick look at various machines and the range of adventures available for them, a short list of synonyms and a list of books and magazines catering for the growing number of adventurers.

This is all pretty routine, but it is the second half of the book that will prove to be very useful - it takes the form of a series of "scratch-pads", on which the adventurer can keep track of the various games he may be in the process of solving. Thus, there is a column in which the description of each location is recorded, along with a column for objects found in that location, actions tried and the results of those actions. Then there are columns in which recognised verbs and nouns can be recorded, and finally a network of boxes which can be built into a map of the adventure. This format is repeated for up to 10 adventures, and if you use a pencil, then the book can be used indefinitely.

As the book is spiral-bound, it can lie flat beside the micro and as a dedicated dedication-reader, I loved Mike's: "to my Nan". All together: Aaahh!

The Adventurer's Companion is just as useful in helping the player keep track of his adventure, but it is concerned with just four games, and is nothing less than a crib sheet! No room, here, for the history of computer adventures, or overviews of available software. Instead, there is nothing but the complete solutions to The Hobbit, Scott Adams' Pirate Adventure and Adventureland, and as well as the grand-daddy of them all, Crowther and Woods' Colossal Cave Adventure, in the Level 9 incarnation.

Rather than working through the solution move-by-move, the Gerrards offer instead a list of all the problems, directing the player to a numbered paragraph in which that particular problem is fully explored. At the end of the book are maps pertaining to each adventure.

For anyone stuck in The Goblin's Dungeon, or who is having trouble recovering his treasure from the Pirate's Chest, The Adventurer's Companion should prove to be just that - if you are weak-willed, however, and can't resist peeking, then beware!