Producer: Number 9
Retail Price: £9.95
Author: Garry Marsh

I think how well this game does will not rely so much on its detailed review, but on the games-player's feelings towards the subject matter. The Beatles were a long time ago, and unless you've been watching too much television you'll realise by now that the home games-playing market is quite young (the belated conversion of a staid publishing rival is testament to that).

Let's have a look at the first frame, which follows a picture of the famous zebra crossing outside the Abbey Road recording studio in London. 'You are in a bedsitter, circa 1969. You recognise it from the Hist/soc-sit-com vids back home, eg Hancock and The Liver Birds. The flowered wallpaper is brown and peeling, the naked light bulb flickers dimly. You can see a sink full of dirty dishes; the cooker needs cleaning. At the far end of the room is a divan bed. Someone is lying on the bed. A telephone lies nearby. You can see a pair of knitting needles.'

You might be a little puzzled by some of the above, so let me take you through it. Your view of the Beatles era is from a space station of 2953, where life is sedate and peaceful and boring. All your needs are catered for by the supreme machine Sel-Taeb 4, a word which if reversed says 4 Beatles. As keeper of the archives it is your responsibility to ensure that the New Earth retains its past. Your present interest is in the pre Dark-Times mythology, particularly the ballards of the so-called New Renaissance Minstrels. The four kings of Emi are more familiar to us as the four musicians who gave EMI some very profitable years.

The way in which you score points in the adventure is very much like any other, with the player collecting objects of interest and returning them to the bedsitter at the start location. What is different is that the collection of some items seems to decrease your score - or perhaps asking for your score reflects a competitive attitude unbecoming of the sixties? Also, your advance through the adventure will only be assured if you first familiarize yourself with Beatles lyrics, which, naturally enough, will only be easy if you possess their records or have one of the many books published shortly after John Lennon's death on a New York street - an event which made no more Beatles reunions a cert. An appreciation of sixties slang wouldn't go amiss either.

Beatle Quest, from a company that gets its name from a joke of John Lennon's which coalesced around the number nine, is full of sixties atmosphere. Everyone seemed either naive or idealistic in the sixties, but society seemed a good deal happier for it. The greedy, grabbing, fizzy, sickly sweet, simplistic, superficial effervecence of the eighties was never suspected; if it was, I doubt whether a single hippy would have bothered getting out of bed. Recently radio stations have been playing fresh copies of sixties classics, notable for the sharpness of the lyrics, and the BBC are repeating the Hancock half hours. Like the recent Till Death Us Do Part repeat, Hancock showed how good television could be before the BBC settled down into its old regime of cold baths, pathetic sell-outs and a feeling that its primary purpose was to keep the masses quiet and blissfully unaware. If the recent nostalgia for the sixties continues, and replaces the nostalgia for Victorian Empire, the BBC will be better for it. The superbly crafted and atmospheric adventure of the fab four, featuring officially endorsed lyrics, isn't a bad place to start your trip down memory lane.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: difficult
Graphics: some - imaginative
Presentation: redesigned character set
Input facility: verb/noun
Response: fast

FAX BOX
Game: Beatle Quest
Publisher: Number 9 Software
Price: £9.95

Hey man... er... like... this is quite a groovy number, dig? Like, er, if you fancy the lyrics of John Lennon, sucking a sugar cube, and digging the psychedelic sixties, then this trip is for you, maaan!

From the far-off future you've made your way, via a provoking Fantasy Dome, back to the Swinging Sixties and into an amazing adventure based on the lyrics of the Beatles.

I know The Grim Reaper's as old as the hills but I had difficulty remembering half the lyrics of some of the songs. Unless you're an ageing hippy you may well have difficulty getting into this game.

Beatle Quest was written by Gary Marsh again using The Quill. But there're all sorts of funny little quirks - when the program doesn't understand you it comes up with the reponse Goo Goo K'Joob(!) from that well-known Lennon ditty. And trying to go in the wrong direction gets you a 'Hey! No way man!'

The aim of the game is to collect as many original artefacts as possible and return them to the start location. Sounds pretty trendy eh? You might enjoy the graphics and the redefined character set but Death almost ended up in the grave with the terminal hippy hippy shakes. Steer clear unless you've got Beatles coming out of your ears.

Publisher: Number 9 Software, 47 St Georges Avenue West, Wolstanton, Newcastle, Staffordshire
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K

While millions of impressionable girls were screaming their hearts out at Beatles' concerts in the far off Sixties, I was busy spending my Saturday afternoons in front of my mum's full-length mirror.

In my hipster trousers and already outmoded pointed shoes, I wriggled and postured in a vain attempt to convince myself that I bore some resemblance to that incarnation of all evil, Mick Jagger. With my Dansette blasting out Satisfaction I would practise looking cool and nonchalant for the evening's youth club dance. It never seemed to work - letters of sympathy will be gratefully received.

This qualifies me admirably to take a dispassionate view of Beatle Quest from Number 9 Software, an adventure written in open admiration of the Fab Four and a program which Beatles freaks will probably rush to add to their collection of memorabilia.

The game is a Quilled adventure with location graphics and bases the action around a large number of Beatles'songs, so you'll find it useful to dig out those dog-eared albums for the lyrics on the inner sleeves. You'll also need to know a bit of Sixties'slang - ageing relatives who claim to have once been hippies may be able to help.

The aim is to travel through the various regions, all of which are the settings of songs, and collect the items you find. Those must be returned to the start location - your miserable hovel of a bedsitter, with its broken window and peeling wallpaper. You can only finish the game when you have all the items and a top score.

Beware! The scoring system is not into uncool competitiveness and you may find that repeatedly asking for your score will reduce it quickly to zero. Certain illegal items will also knock points off, so stay clean and hang loose.

After passing the starting screen with its picture of the Abbey Road zebra crossing you find yourself in the bedsit. Your spaced-out girlfriend is also there, "just seventeen, you know what I mean. The way she looks is way beyond compare..." There are various things scattered about, the most useful of which is a book. If you carry this and open it in tight situations you may find some words of advice - though suitably mystic and framed in song lyrics.

After you've explored a bit you'll suddenly be told that you've got "the Hippy Hippy Shakes. You need some natural E." Now 'natural E' is raw food and you must brave the streets to find some - even a red herring has its uses. If you ignore the shakes your bodily organs will be destroyed by fatal vibrations, so you have no option but to wander outside.

Pretty quickly you'll realise that Maxwell - he of the Silver Hammer - lives around here too. That homicidal maniac will pursue you and, unless you can find a way to get rid of him, "Bang, Bang, Maxwell's Silver Hammer comes down upon your head"! Use the RAM Save function regularly to recover from his assaults and try again.

If you're lucky your cranium won't be fractured and you can travel to the church where Eleanor Rigby has just been buried, to Desmond and Molly's market stall or maybe get a bus down to Penny Lane. If you can't find a bus pass I suggest you search the old school thoroughly - but be careful, that is Maxwell's main base and very dangerous. Be careful too of drinking Dr Robert's Special Cup. That turns you into a real Nowhere Man.

The game continues iri this vein with plenty of pitfalls and puzzles to negotiate. The interpreter's responses are Beatle lines too. If you do something irrelevant you'll be told "Oh... you can't do that." Talk nonsense and you get "Goo Goo G'Joob?"

At first I was aggravated by the Shakes and Maxwell's repeated murder attempts but, after I'd found my way around those, I got into the swing of things and searched for my old records to find the way out of tricky situations.

The game is well constructed and uses the lyrics in an ingenious way to create a bizarre world of sixties' nostalgia. The style is humorous and makes a change from the more well-worn adventure plots.

If you're a fan then Beatle Quest is bound to be your bag, man. If you're not, you'll still find an entertaining game with plenty of interest.

Unlike the author of this game, Gary Marsh (no relation!), I am not a fan of the Beatles, being more at home with the likes of Iron Maiden. Therefore, when I read the instructions which said "... bear in mind that Beatle Quest is based on Beatles lyrics and wherever possible the storylines have been followed...", I had a feeling that I would have problems getting to grips with the game.

The accompanying booklet sets the scene for your journey into Beatle Quest. The year is 2953 and everything is sedate and peaceful. It is also very boring. You are "keeper of the archives" - the whole history of the earth. In your work you stumble across the four kings of Emi, the Beatles. Mesmerised by the lyrics found in the ballads, you take all known information about the "Four Kings" to the pleasure dome, where feeding the information into the data banks creates a world inside your mind.

Very far fetched - those purple power pills must have affected Mr Marsh's sense of reality!

The game starts in a bedsit circa 1969. On exploring, you find a test tube, a book and, inside a telephone, an innocent looking sugar lump. Upon eating the sugar, the game responds "Wow.. psychedelic man."

The most distasteful part of the Beatles era was the drug-taking and, with the current nationwide problem with drug addiction, I find this abhorrent. It is a very sick way of introducing humour into the game.

Once outside the bedsit, you find yourself on a street leading east to west. You feel sure you are being followed and a few moves later you are dead. "Bang bang, Maxwell's silver hammer comes down on your head.

"Bang bang, Maxwell's silver hammer makes sure you are dead,"

It seemed impossible to escape this fate (although no doubt it wasn't) so that is where I decided to leave this dreadful game.

Don't expect any music in this game for it is completely silent. Maybe this is due to copyright, or because it is Quilled - either way it is incredible that a game with the Beatles as its subject should have no music, especially on a computer like the Commodore 64!