Indiana Jones - Desktop adventures

The trend in games is from big to elephantine, with three or four CD-ROMs and 50 megabytes or more of hard disk requirement no longer unusual. Indiana Jones - Desktop Adventures, which comes on two floppies is, by comparison, a shrimp and hence rather refreshing. This is a Windows implementation of an old fashioned style of adventure where a small figure moves around a playing area using a weapon, pushing boulders and picking up artefacts, the sort of thing we were playing on Amigas and Ataris back in the 80s.

It is, however, somewhat improved by a neat mechanism that produces billions of variants on the plot, some (written) speech interaction between characters and reasonable graphical controls. If you're using the Windows 95 Energy Star feature to set your monitor to standby, you should be aware that on my PC, Indiana caused Windows to crash when the power saving feature cut in.

Overall - a compact graphical game which feels a little old fashioned but is flexible enough to continue being interesting for a while, and is good value for money. Priced around ú9.99 in the UK. Produced by LucasArts, web site: http://www.lucasarts.com Distributed by Virgin Interactive Entertainment.