Fistful of Necronomicons
       (A Zenobi Emulated Text adventure - ST, PC Amiga)

           Reviewed By James Jillians on the ST.

In this text game, which can be emulated for ST, PC and Amiga from
the Spectrum version, you play the part of Brian Woodlouse, the
fifteen year old veteran of a previous Zenobi adventure (don't ask
me which). One day, Brian receives a desperate plea of help from
one of his friends - Rodney Prentice. Rodney has worked his way up
to the dizzy heights of being the local High Mage's apprentice and
aspires to the position of High Mage himself. However, all is
jeopardised when Rodney, curiously investigating the High Mage's
magical trinkets while the High Mage is away on business,
accidentally activates a spell of Teleportation which whisks away
the mage's most prized tome, his Necronomicon, to goodness knows
where.

Rodney realises that his chances of becoming a great mage depend
on his ability to recover the lost book. The good news is that he
is able to locate the approximate whereabouts of the tome
magically. The bad news is that it has materialised in a far-off
land inhabited by trolls, elves and other weird and dangerous
beings. Being a bit of a weed, Rodney elects to call in his friend
Brian (you) to go and retrieve the Necronomicon. This is where the
game starts.

Your first objective is to collect the ingredients needed to cast
another Teleportation spell, this time to send you off on your
quest - a fairly easy task to get you started. After a few simple
examining and collecting operations you are magically transported
to the far off land where you can begin the hunt.  After plodding
around the countryside for a while (and negotiating some of the
local hazards) you arrive in a (very) small town where you may
seek the aid of the blacksmith, shopkeeper or simply pop into the
saloon to try the local brew.

It is at this point you get stuck - completely and utterly. I
cannot imagine that anyone could solve the puzzle that now faces
them.  Not only is the item you need hidden so craftily that it is
almost impossible to find, but it proves to be back in Rodney's
hut, which is of course now unreachable. After hours of futile
searching I gave up. Not even the mighty adventure-solving talent
of Shebo could help me out. I resorted to a quick peek at the
solution. I don't think that I risk spoiling your enjoyment of the
adventure by telling you where I found the lost item (a knife as
it happens) - it was lying plain as day on a table top.  "But how
could you miss such a prominently placed article as that?", you
might well ask. Although on the table top, the knife could not be
found by merely "EXAMINING THE TABLE". You have to "EXAMINE THE
TABLE CAREFULLY" to discover a scratch in the table's surface. It
is only then by "EXAMINING THE SCRATCH CAREFULLY" you notice the
whacking great knife sticking out of the table. Whoever thought
that one up was making a serious attempt to lose himself some
players.

@~Clearly a scratch of similar magnitude as the Grand Canyon. I
@~would say that's really stretching the use of the examine
@~command ... Sue

After you have overcome this initial hurdle, the game is
surprising easy to complete. The puzzles are all fairly logical
and mostly object-related. No other non-standard adventuring
commands, like "carefully", are required. In fact, the rest of the
game is quite enjoyable while it lasts.

The game, like all Spectrum games I have played, is short. I put
this down to memory limitations. This might make you think twice
about buying the game as opposed to a PD game written specifically
for your computer.

The text is well written, mistake free and occasionally humorous.
There is no interaction with characters in the game other than the
"TALK TO <CHARACTER>" command.  There are no graphics. One thing
that can be quite annoying after a while is the slowness of input.
That's all right if you happen to be slow at typing or look at the
screen while entering commands, but if, like me, you look at the
keys, you can input a whole multi-command sentence only to
discover that certain letters have not registered.

ROUND-UP

I would recommend "Fistful Of Necronomicons" as a few hours of
fun, although there is nothing particularly special about it. If
you haven't yet bought "A Handful Of Hamsters" I would suggest you
get that instead since you get seven humorous games for your money
(four of them very good adventures too). Another good buy might be
"Civil Service II", which I haven't reviewed yet, but is good for
people who like word-games and logic puzzles. The disks cost
œ2-99 each and can be obtained from :

ZENOBI SOFTWARE, 26 SPOTLAND TOPS, CUTGATE, ROCHDALE, LANCASHIRE
OL12 7RX.






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