Nethack! - On PD 127 and 290
                   (RPG for ST and PC)

             Reviewed on the ST by Ian Taylor

If first impressions count, then it's bad news for NETHACK.  This
is a modern(ish) version of an old game called HACK! which was
written for character-based terminals on mini-computers - or
that's my guess anyway.  NETHACK! was clearly designed to be
played over a network, again using ASCII characters only and it
shows.  This is the Atari ST version and is stand-alone.  As you
may be able to guess, this all means that the screen layout is
pretty basic, though as the supplied documentation doesn't quite
match the reality, the screen layout's probably better(!) on the
ST.

What do you get for your money?  Well if you haven't got 1 Meg or
a double-sided disk-drive, you've got a useless disk!  If you do
have these minimum requirements, you get a game (no!) and a
ramdisk - or at least you do if Sue's remembered to put the
ramdisk on your floppy.  If she hasn't (as with my review copy),
@+you'll get an error when you try to go to level 2. ~(Oops - Sue)

Having installed my ramdisk and re-booted, I loaded up the game.
Thinking to myself "Sue's sent me this to review, you've got to at
least give it a try", I set about trying to play.  Press Cursor
Up.  Nothing happened.  What's going on ???  Looks at the list of
instructions.  What the heck!  To move north, you press the K key.
Obvious really!  To move South, West and East you press J, H and L
respectively.  It's hardly intuitive, but at least combat's not
real- time, so you have got time to think (a relief after
finishing Knightmare).  What's moving got to do with combat?  It's
simple -

To attack something, you try to move onto the square it occupies.
Do this a few times and either you kill it or it kills you.  In
good old D & D fashion, you get experience for killing it and can
even go up levels if you have enough experience.  Monsters are all
represented by letters - if you see a letter in the dungeon, it's
after you!

The exception to this rule is your dog.  A little 'd' follows you
around getting under your feet and helping you fight monsters
until a cruel monster kills it.  It also has a slightly
disconcerting habit of eating any dead bodies that happen to be
lying about!  I was a bit hungry so I tried the same trick.
"Yuck! Dog food" was the response.

Any dungeon would be incomplete without magic.  In Nethack!
there's lots of it.  Unfortunately, the only way to find out
exactly what something is, is to try it.  I say unfortunately
because very often scrolls and magic items such as rings seem to
be unhelpful(!). A good example of this is the ring that attracts
monsters.  You won't last long wearing this, but by the time you
realise what you're wearing, you'll be dead.  There are ways and
means of finding out what an item is, but they're not always
convenient.

The game has several quite amusing aspects to it, like the dog and
the fact that you can start off as a tourist (complete with
camera).  Indeed, once you get over the initial starkness of the
appearance, the game has a certain charm, but I can't help feeling
that its main value is as a period piece.  It's an early attempt
at an Ultima-type world. My personal feeling is that that's all
it is and why bother when you can get better?  On the other hand
my editor-at-home (i.e. my lady wife) says that I'm being
extremely unfair and that a game of this type in which you feel
you're actually making progress is a distinct advantage.  Take
your pick, but either way, it's only œ2.50, so what have you to
lose?