Gordon Bennett!! Look what's just dropped through the shed's letterbox! A blue 3.5" disk with the letters SAM on it! Let's have a look. It is! It's Prince Of Persia (and I'm going to review it!)
    No doubt if you're a proud owner of those posh 16-bit machines you'll know all about this game, but for others I'd better fill in the gaps. Basically, Prince of Persia came out on the Amiga and ST around Christmas and was generally declared to be the best platform game anybody had seen in ages. It appeared a couple of months later on the 8-bit Amstrad (looking just as juicy, sort of) but nobody dreamt they'd ever see it on the Speccy. And to date they haven't been proved wrong! Obviously, those clever folks over at SAM HQ were quick to realise this, and decided to upstage our humble rubber-keyed chum by doing a really prestige conversion job on it. And after all the problems they've had trying to get their blue and white baby taken seriously, this might just do the trick. It really is terrific stuff.
    So, erm, let's delve into the mysteries of the East, shall we?
    
Sultans Of Swing
Right, the plot. You play the Prince himself, who's sitting at the bottom of a huge castley-dungeon type thing. Your girlfriend's been kidnapped, and being held at the top of one of the towers. So you've got to work your way up the levels until you reach (and, I suppose, rescue) her.
    So how come it's so classy then? Well, for a start there's the animation - you've never seen anything like it. Your little chap rushes around in such an amazingly life-like manner that it looks there's a real blokey dashing around the screen. His hands fly about and his body jerks as he runs around - and when he climbs up onto ledges you can see him putting his weight onto his elbows to lift himself up!
    But it's not just the graphics that make PoP so good - you'll soon get hooked exploring the castle, trying to find your way around all the corridors to get to the next level. A quick hint - the first thing to do is find your sword. Once you've got that you stand a better chance at defending yourself against all the baddies who jump out at you, looking for a slice of your flesh (see below).
    
Mapping madness
Wandering around the castle is a mapper's dream. There are five levels [Ummm... 12 or 13 if I remember correctly... - NickH], and each is a different floor with scret rooms and potions to be drunk (most of these restore strength, but be on your guard - a couple will make you very ill indeed!). Just to make things a bit more difficult there are gates (which operate by pressure pads on the floor nearby) and snapping guillotines (you're going to need timing here). As you get further into the castle things get more complicated and a lot harder. You'll be lucky to have any hair on your head left by Level Three!
    What else? Oh yes, the sound's also pretty amazing. Weird Eastern-type tunes flow out (and there are some fabby sound effects), so it's all a million miles from the standard Speccy beeps and burps.
    There's no doubt about it - Prince Of Persia is very difficult, very addictive, and an awful lot of fun. And (sorry to go on about it) the graphics are so brill that I simply got to give it a Megagame. Goodness knows it deserves it (just as the SAM deserves such a corking game to show off all it's jolly clever talents). Heartily recommended.
    

OH NO! HERE COME THE BADDIES! There are basically two sorts of evil baddies in PoP. The first lot appear throughout the game and are swarthy, baggy-trousered cut-throats straight out of Arabian Nights. They look as though they smell a lot and would stick their swords right through you as soon as look at you. Just approach them, press Fire, and a gleaming sabre will magically appear in your hand to thrust and parry with. These swordfighting bits add a brilliant element of excitement and skill to the game - they're done so well you actually feel you're learning to fence! (Your opponents get more and more difficult to beat, so you've really got to stay on your toes and get better all the time.)     On later levels you bump into a couple of horrible skeletons. Instead of just lying there doing nothing (like real skeletons do) they attack you in rather a vicious manner. And guess what? You can't kill them! Eek! All you can do is get them to any nearby high ledges and push them off (which is easier said than done!).

THE START OF SOMETHING BIG? We've seen quite a few Coupe-specific titles before, but this is SAM Computer's first real tip for the top. So what about their other plans?     Well, the big news is Lemmings. They haven't signed a deal with publishers Psygnosis yet, but if they pull it off (which they think they will) they'll have the biggest-selling (and most critically acclaimed) 16-bit game of the year on their hands. The game is a totally original puzzler (and cute to boot) in which you've got to steer hundreds of little, er, lemmings through various assault courses against a time limit, employing their various talents of bridge-building and digging (etc) as you go.     The company is also having "discussions" with the Codies, so we may well see Dizzy popping up on a SAM screen soon too.