HAVE they got it right this time? Is it third time lucky for the Don Bluth crew? Perhaps the two previous games, Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, were only practice runs. These were my fervent hopes as I unpacked the five Escape from Singe's Castle discs.

First impressions? Sigh. In common with the other Don Bluth creations, gameplay is yet again, how shall I put it, sparse. Second impressions were of embarrassment - the joystick was not plugged in.

Try again. Ah, the joystick certainly makes a difference. Admittedly, gameplay is the same type of "move left now, move right then" as before, but the presentation has been markedly improved.

Now we have three difficulty levels, choice of number of lives, random order of scenes, up to five saved game positions and stone me if it all does not multi-task as well! Plus the invaluable "helper" which will appear on-screen and drop subtle hitns, such as when to wiggle in a certain direction.

The helper means you can advance quite far through the game before things start getting difficult. Combined with the difficulty levels, it means that both inexperienced gamers and hardened addicts will be able to get the skill level just right.

Yup, looks like this sequel to Dragon's Lair might have pushed the gampelay to the dizzy heights of "quite enjoyable". For any normal game, a playability rating such as this would be so-so, but with the phenomenal graphics and sound of a Don Bluth production, this suddenly means that the Amiga versions are suspiciously starting to look like some of the best software ever written.

Of course, it would be nice to see more flexibility - the labyrinth sequence shows this is theoretically possible, because as Dirk the Drongo flails around a maze in search of an exit, you have total control of the direction to take.

This sequence can be played almost indefinitely until you either find the way out or poor Dirk takes a wrong turn and crashes into a wall. If the rest of the game allowed as much expression of free will it would be breathtaking.

This must be the most techie-friendly game I have yet to see, because it will run with floppy drives, hard drives (any make, unlike the prequel), and as much extra memory as possible. Plus, it will run on a bare minimum, one drive, 512k system.

Sound and certain animation sequences can be skipped to allow the game to be shoe-horned into your particularly setup, or to speed things up slightly by reducing the number of loads.

Basically, the more hardware you have connected to your Amiga, the better the game gets.

As an added bonus, you can incorporate your original Dragon's Lair's discs to form one staggeringly huge game. Now you can practice the levels in the original game which you never got past, and use the helper to provide vital clues.

If you sit down to play the entire combined epic, the random shuffling feature will produce one long, unique stunning performance. Deciding the ratings for software like this is always an interesting experience. Immediately it gets 15 for graphics because, quite simply, they are brilliant, astounding and generally good. Sound also gets a 15 because when Dirk walks up to a strange door he hums to himself and then gets attacled by a large monster; this sequence is one of the funniest things I have ever seen on the Amiga. It totally cracked me up.

Gameplay is the tricky one. It is not perfect by a long way, but the overall ease of use has been improved a great deal. I think I will be generous here, because at least it is getting better.

Value? Hmmm. That is where it all falls down. The price is steep and will only encourage Singe's Castle to become the next number one pirated game, especially with the unprotected discs and relatively simple password system.

Make sure you see this game, it uses the Amiga in the way it was intended - to amaze.

What, another Don Bluth game? This one, actually has a surprise up its sleeve. Dragon's Lair and Space Ace both featured excellent graphics and fantastic sound digitised from the laser disk arcade machines. However, the lack of gameplay reflected in the middling rating it received in the software, although this was by no means the case with the Gallup charts.

Singe's Castle improves upon its forebears, though, with the aid of three difficulty levels and a small brown box. The first level is easy and only eight stages long. The small box at the bottom of the screen flashes up the appropriate joystick move a second or so before it is required. On this level it takes only about half an hour to go right through (although you do not get the finishing sequence). On the intermediate section there is fifteen stages and even less time to complete the moves (and no end sequence). The hard level has twenty stages and you need to be able to have remembered all the moves from the medium levels, and you need to have split second timing to complete the new sections which appear. More importantly, if you complete this you get the cartoon show at the end, which is well worth seeing.

This does wonders for the game. It manages to drag itself out of the swamp of mediocre software, brushes itself down and becomes quite presentable. The addition of difficulty levels, decent presentation and the little help box makes an amazing difference.

Naturally the graphics are very good indeed. The short animated sequences have to be seen to be appreciated. Unfortunately, the graphics lend call for an impromptu two player mode, one to play an done to goggle and say "Did you see that". Again the sound is sampled straight from the arcade machine.

At last EI seem to have got the laser disk conversions pretty much of pat. All it takes is five disks, two drives and a meg to get everything running smoothly. Well worth checking out.

Hee hee! I'm off to Dublin to visit Don Bluth's studios with thirteen other 'journos' and I'm going to see All Dogs Go To... um, sorry, to report on the state of play of interactive cartoons. You see, Don Bluth's Studios, the people behind movies like An American Tail and All Dogs Go To Heaven, are the parent company of Sullivan Bluth Interactive Media (or SBIM), the guys that brought you (via Readysoft) Dragon's Lair and Space Ace.

Right, I've packed my 'overnite bag'- now to catch the Dublin plane. Erm... what's that big customs man doing with those Marigolds? (Rubbery sound.)
Hem, hem. When Dragon's Lair first appeared in the arcades in the early eighties, it was pretty revolutionary. It used laser disk technology, touted cartoon quality graphics and offered punters the opportunity to interact with the main characters' adventures. Since this time, Don Bluth's animation has been brought to home computers and the high standard in graphics has continued. Right, fasten your seat belts 'cos we're about to land and then we can find out just who on earth is this Don Bluth chappie?

Don Bluth was a senior animator at Walt Disney before he left in 1979 with twelve colleagues. They started off working in Don's garage, where the produced the award winning television special, Banjo The Woodpile Cat and The Secret of NIMH. In 1984 they were brought to the attention of financier Morris Sullivan, who set up Sullivan Studios Inc. and established the first studio in California. Along with the studio in Dublin, they produced the highest grossing first-release animated feature, An American Tail. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Right, let's see All Dogs Go To Heaven... (No, tell them about Don Bluth's animation concept! Ed.) Oh alright then. From the outset, the ethos of Don Bluth's studios has been to attain a high graphical standard. In terms of the movies, the aim is to achieve the 'classical animation' of early Disney. This objective has of course been applied to the computer games too and the artwork is produced via traditional animation techniques. The screen artwork is digitised and then 'flipped' to produce the animation effect. Now, can we go and watch All Dogs Go To Heaven? (Oh, alright then. Ed.)
"Hurrah!" - thirteen journalists voices. ( And they all cried at the sad bit in the end. Ed.)

So where do all the computer games fit into this? Well, Don Bluth's subsidiary, the aforementioned SBIM, where the people behind Dragon's Lair, the coin-op storm from the early 80s. Several other machines were planned, but basically the laser disk technology proved to be way ahead of its time. The early machines were unreliable and arcades had problems repairing them! So SBIM now decided to turn to the computer market.

They employed Readysoft to convert Dragon's Lair. It sold billions, everyone gasped at the splendour of the graphics but groaned at the quality of the gameplay. Dragon's Lair was followed by Space Ace, and now by Dragon's Lair: Escape From Singe's Castle. Speaking of which...

Here's Don Bluth's third game and the second in the Dragon's Lair series. It runs in its entirety on a one Meg Amiga, or without sound or death sequence on the 512K machines. It also boasts random 'flipping' (so that repeated events may not happen, in the same order, or may be mirror images) and multi-tasking. It can even run with Dragon's Lair!

Anyway, the question you all want answered is: has Escape From Singe's Castle learned from the 'brilliant graphics, shame about the gameplay' response to its predecessors?

David: Er... No. When I first saw the brilliant graphics in a Don Bluth game - I almost swallowed my plastic haddock biro! Still, after the excitement subsides, you come to the basic dilemma - a game with beautiful graphics, limited gameplay, five disks(!) and retailing at a whopping 45 sovs! (Mind you, as Ken - our Work Experience chum - pointed out, that's nine pounds a disk! Thanks, Ken.)

Some people can finish it in 30 minutes or so - and others can't get past the first screen. These two camps ensure that people will either hate or love it, but at the end of the day, what it boils down to is a graphic treat with very one-dimensional gameplay. You either perform the correct move at the correct time or you die. Ho-hum. To make sure you get the best from this kind of game, you are much better off watching a friend play!
The amount of concentration you will need to time a precise joystick move means you miss the splendid cartoon action.

I conclude then, that in this form although the graphics are light years ahead, it's the gameplay and lastability that are the most crucial factors. Since both are lacking, the overall mark for the game has to be low (which is a shame in the light of its technical merit, but more justifiable in view of the price tag).

Notice we qualified our conclusions with the phrase 'in this form'. Are Don Bluth games likely to end up in a more playable configuration? Read on...

Riding on the tide of excitement generated by the arcade Dragon's Lair, several other arcade machine titles were planned. Unfortunately however, when the market fell out of the bottom... er, sorry, I mean when the bottom fell out of this market, a lot of these titles had to be shelved. These are now destined to appear straight onto home computers. They will include the following titles: Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp, Dragon's Lair: The Legend, Dragon's Lair: The Crochet-Work Toilet Seat Cover (er... actually I was lying about the last one) and Space Ace II: Borf's Revenge, not forgetting of course SBIM's next project, The Sea Beast And Barnacle Bill.
And there will also be the computer game of All Dogs Go To Heaven (hurrah! - Just imagine having all the fun of the movie without any of the twee songs!). Oh, and they are also going to produce games for the Nintendo and Sega consoles. That'll keep you consolers happy, eh?

In terms of the far distant future, SBIM are very excited by the potential of CD technology, both CD-ROM and CD-I (Compact Disk Interactive). In terms of the gameplay, I decided to corner SBIM's producer Rick Van Ysseldyk and ask him about this rather hoary old chestnut. Basically, Rick admits that the gameplay is totally linear - perform one correct action and move forward, or anything else and you'll initiate a 'death sequence'- and he puts this down to the fact that the games until now have been arcade conversions.

Sea Beast however, although destined for the arcade, never actually appeared and so will be written to cope with the individual capabilities of the computers in question. Only time will tell.

Dirk the Daring's last Amiga appearance saw him half way through his brave quest to rescue Princess Daphne. Now the second half of the Dragon's Lair coin-op has been coded and you can finish the task. The game begins with you deep in Singe's castle; the hideous dragon has hidden Daphe deep in the Castle's catacombs. Watching over her are a whole host of monsters, traps and - worst of all - the Evil Shapeshifter.

While Escape is the prequel to Space Ace (58%, Issue 59), it's the most recent to be converted and has many advances over Ace. Due to the spectacular set-piece graphics the main character still has a limited number of actions per scene, e.g. 'jump left and fire' to be performed at just the right moments. There's only one way to do things - mistime your actions and you lose a life. But unlike Ace there's a 'Helper' option where arrows appear on screen showing you what moves to make (until you get near the end). These moves are not always the same and can change from game to game.

There's also a 'Flipping' option, which improves lastability by forcing you to play most rooms twice, their order random with many shown mirrored. There are also three difficulty levels; 'easy' meaning there are less scenes to beat. Even more impressive, Dragon's Lair Part 1 can be linked to its sequel so you can play the whole coin-op - complete with 'Helper'-arrows on the first part, as well!

If you don't have a 1Mb machine you lose sound, and can choose to drop birth/death sequences to save disk accessing. You can still save the game though.