Not a conversion of the Amiga game by Graftgold, this version of Fire & Ice is all-new. It has been created by Slava Kalinin & Kirill Kagan of n-Discovery Group who are based in Russia & Belarus respectively (well they were when they produced Fire & Ice).

This is also the first TR-DOS game I've reviewed for TRB and I might as well start off with an absolute corker (I've also produced a short feature about TR-DOS in the Misc section, called TR-DOS primer. It's a basic introduction for people who've not explored that OS).

Once loaded, you'll be presented with a menu of three options ('FIRE&ICE', 'F&I_help' and 'boot'). If you choose 'F&I_help' then the (quite lengthy) programmers' intro will appear. This gives you background information about the game itself and some Q&A's.

All this is presented in an animated graphical form, to some music. You may not want to watch it more than once or twice but as it's very well presented it keeps you interested.

When you get into the game itself, there's a fantastic intro sequence whose style reminds me of Zelda: Links Awakening on the Gameboy. This intro sequence is skippable (naturally) but you'll want to see it a few times. It really is that good. Fire & Ice's inclusion in the Best Introduction Award category is well deserved. And you can view it here.

The high-quality presentation is carried on to the level selection screen. Again, you can see the console-esque influences. It's an animated, colourful screen which makes you wonder why more commercial Speccy games didn't have such attention to detail.

Each of the nine game worlds has nine levels you need to complete. So the game's not a short one despite all the colourful graphics and presentation. One user-friendly aspect I've not seen since Lemmings 2 is the level select method.

From the world-map screen you can rotate your cursor to choose an individual world. You can then choose any one of the nine levels to play. If you get stuck, you can press the Escape key (I'm not actually sure which 'real' Speccy key it is) and then choose another level within that world.

Alternatively, you can press Escape again and choose another world and another level. Supremely brilliant planning on behalf of the programmers.

Now on with the game itself (finally).