Publisher: Artic Computing
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair, Cursor

Who thinks of software names at Artic? Assemblage is a suite of four games and not a machine code utility.

Side one contains two arcade games, Harry Hare's Lair and Mutant Monty and the Temple of Doom.

Harry Hare's Lair has you playing the part of a rabbit after carrots. You make a wild dash through the tunnels of your lair, which are inhabited by deadly giant spiders and worms, to get to the carrots which have been planted at the top of the screen.

Mutant Monty and the Temple of Doom is another feeble, flickering, attempt by Artic to make a go of their cartoon hero. Monty runs rampant in true Manic Miner style, collecting as many valuables as possible without being relieved of his entrails on the local altar.

The Curse of the Seven Faces is a text-only adventure in which you must assemble the accoutrements of a wizard to become a magic user. The ever-present curse will be with you on your travels through the misty caverns, as will an evil wizard, who is bent on your destruction.

Robin Hood is a Quilled adventure with full screen graphics supplied by the Illustrator, also from Gilsoft. The graphics are drawn slowly, but they disappear when the description of a location appears. You play nature-loving Robin roaming around a forest full of interesting and unlikely locations.

The arcade games are not much cop and it would have been a crime to release them individually but, together with the adventures on the other side of the tape, they make a varied diet.

Supplier: Artic Computing
Machine: Spectrum 48K
Price: £8.95

This Assemblage cassette from Artic contains two arcade games on one side of the tape, and two adventures on the other.

One adventure, Curse of the Seven Faces, was originally reviewed in the August 85 issue (Personal Rating 7) when it was released by Imperial Software, priced £8.95. At the time I suggested it was a little overpriced.

The second adventure on the Assemblage tape, is Robin Hood, and described as "Adventure H from Artic, it is a graphic adventure, with quite good full-screen pictures that are fast to display, and do not reappear once viewed, unless requested.

For some reason, Robin seems to be a favourite character to base an adventure on. This isn't exactly a prime example, though will provide some entertainment for fans of Mr Hood, even if it doesn't stretch their minds too much!

As Robin, wearing Lincoln green, and armed with bow and arrow, you explore the forest, and eventually get into the castle. Points are awarded for discovering valuable objects, and for solving certain puzzles.

Not that the problems are particularly hard. Lighting a lamp found in location one, with a flint found in (probably) location two, is hardly mind-bending. But then this isn't a mind-bending adventure, and can be recommended for younger players or beginners.

A value-for-money package - especially if there are arcade players in the family!

This style of game would not be worth considering, were it not for the graphics. Although some large games make the use of graphics pointless, because they take up too much space, they enhance a game of this type. The number of games on the tape make it certainly worth thinking about. As you can expect to pay over £9 for many games, it's good to see some companies producing worthwhile compilations.