Someone has pinched the wabbits from Pum! And there are only two people who can get them back - two decrepit sorcerers called Wiz 'n' Liz. This is the Amiga version of Psygnosis' first console game and a right little cracker it is too. You have to guide either Wiz or Liz through 112 levels and round up all the bunnies. Every time you collect a wabbit you are rewarded with letter or bonus object which gives you more points, time, an exit gate or enables you to cast all kinds of brilliant spells.

Spells are created by combining two different bonus objects and sticking them in the wizards' cauldron - experiment a little and all kinds of sub-games and cheats are yours, including the two shops which can be used to buy more potion ingredients or gameplaying hints. Magic, eh?

Despite an overdose of cuteness, Wiz 'n' Liz proves to be surprisingly addictive - time is your constant enemy as you chase across each level collecting more and more wabbits. The game is fast moving and you never feel bored, just increasingly hooked. The split-screen two-player option is great fun too.

The wabbit and sorcerer sprites are small, but well-animated. The whole thing is easy to control thanks to some slick joystick moves. Like a lot of cute games, Wiz 'n' Liz has a young audience in mind. There is no violence and even the difficult levels won't take too long to complete.

Cutesy platform games, eh? Don't you just love 'em? Well, some people do, and if you're the kind of person who likes this kind of thing, then this is the kind of thing you'll like. All the same, you should try before you buy, because it's really for diehard fans of the genre only. Erm... spook! I seem to have come over all 'idiolect cliche'. And - hey - if you don't know what 'idiolect' means, you'll have to look it up in the mythical and legendary AMIGA POWER Dictionary, 'cos it's not in the real one - we checked. Ho ho, etc. Insert your own 'Get on with it' joke here. What are you, stupid or something? (Nurse! - Ed).

This game looks quite good, but not as good as Asteroids. Asteroids is good. What's that you say? You don't think so? I don't care. Me and my mates know a really good joke, but we're not telling you what the punchline is.

(We interrupt this waterfall of drivel to bring you the traditional 'useful game information apparently inserted into review as last-minute afterthought, for comical effect' interjection. Wiz'n'Liz is a fast-moving platform game remarkable for not having any enemies in it. The object of the game is simply to 'save' lots of cuddly wabbits (sic) by running into them, and incidentally collecting the letters of some unusual words along the way. Of course, this would be completely dull if there wasn't some kind of danger, and in Wiz'n'Liz it's the ever-decreasing time limit.

Time's too tight to mention in Wiz'n'Liz (or at least it is if you're playing on the hardest difficulty setting, of which more later), and the only way to stave off clockwork doom is to collect extra seconds from saved bunnies. Disturbingly, that's literally all there is to the body of the gameplay here, and that's the big problem with the game. On Stuart's first go, he trundled away quite happily on what turned out to be one of the highest difficulty combinations, and after about 15 minutes sat back in his chair and said, 'Right, that's the first boss out of the way - I think I've got the hang of this', only for his smug smile to be replaced just seconds later by a look of horror and a disbelieving cry of 'I've finished it?' as the end sequence flickered in front of his eyes. The very hardest settings do extend the game's length considerably, but it's still ridiculously easy to complete. Right, let's see if he's managed to pull himself together yet. - Stuart's Editorial Conscience)

But hey, that's enough about the game - let's talk about something I don't like for three-quarters of a page. Like Whoopi bloody Goldberg for a start, or that appalling, appalling Scottish prat who used to present Gimme 5 on Saturday mornings - don't you just hate it when (Snip! - Ed)

(Thought not. Looks like it's down to me to do the bit where we go 'Hey, but it's not all bad', before coming up with a short list of a game's redeeming features then slagging it off some more again. In Wiz'n'Liz's case, the saving grace is the two-player game. Taking place on a horizontally-split screen, one player takes on the mantle of Wiz, while the other one plays his female counterpart. Gameplay is pretty much the same, except you're battling against each other to win stages and worlds.

While I'm not going to read the instructions to you, basically you have to collect letters while trying to stop the other player from doing the same, and there are various devious tactics you can employ which invariably result in you winning the game, but also getting punched quite hard in the face by your mate. It's great, and I don't care what anybody says.

And now that I come to think of it, there's another saving grace. The amount of hidden stuff in Wiz'n'Liz is just massive - there's hidden bonus sub-games, gameplay clues, wacky visual effects and pointless jokes, all of which are accessed by experimenting with the fruit you can grab in the ordinary levels and mixing them up in your cauldron. There are literally dozens of combinations and various ways of getting to everything, and it'll take you weeks to find it all.

Well, that is, you'll have to wait a month until someone prints the spell codes on their tips pages and completely negates the entire point of the whole game. But anyway. It's odd, in that it makes the main game feel a bit like a kind of sub-plot that's only there as a means by which to access the hidden bits, but let's not examine that too closely, eh? Right, let's give him one last chance. - Stuart's Editorial Conscience).

And another thing - women drivers, right? (Where's that large housebrick? - Ed) I wouldn't say my wife's fat - I'm not married! (I know I left it around here somewhere. - Ed) I know what you think, you punks - you think I'm just padding this review out with a few crap gags at the end to cover up the fact that I've run out of things to say about the game, as usual. And you're right! Ha ha! (Aha, here it is. - Ed) I'm great and you're not! And I get paid for this too! (THWACK! - Ed)

Ow. (Bleeds.) This review was brought to you by an experimental prototype of the Eezi-Write Generic Auto-Reviewing Engine, a product of the Redundancy Inducement Corporation of Miyamoto, Japan.
(You're fired. - Ed)
Ta-da!

Most grannies sit at home sipping the odd cup of cocoa and knitting their favourite grandchildren hideous Arran sweaters. Not this pair though, Wiz 'n' Liz are an energetic couple of Wizards from the Planet Pum. They spend most of their time zooming around the planet doing all sorts of good deeds. It's a good job too 'cos there's a big problem on Pum - all the wabbits have been stolen by dark mysterious forces. And we all know that wabbits are an integral part of any magician's act, so Wiz 'n' Liz set out to save them.

To keep them from being found the wabbits have been scattered around Pum in places like Lunar Land, Grass Land and Desert Land. So, Wiz 'n' Liz must race around the globe picking up as many bunnies as they can find. Collecting the wittle wabbits is easy, simply run over them and they'll disappear - releasing a letter as they do so. The wizards must collect these letters to form a magic word which opens the level's exit. Collecting the wemaining wabbits will give Wiz 'n' Liz special bonuses in the form of fruits and stars.

It's not as easy as all that though 'cos they're up against a timer which diminishes with every passing round. Added to that, after a few levels, you'll come up against a giant guardian who has to be bopped before you can go on. After completing the level it's off back to a staging area where the stars can be used to buy hints, extra lives and more fruit. Why the obsession with citrus? It's not that they're veggies or anything, it's just that they need the fruit to mix together to make special spells. These spells can have mixed results depending on the fruit combination: some give you extra points, others open secret sub-games but other still give you zilch. The sub-games are generally twists on old classics, like wabbit invaders and snakes. There's even one where you throw rotten tomatoes at caricatures of Puggsy's programmers (another Psygnosis game out soon).

Wiz 'n' Liz is a fairly simplistic game but enjoyable nevertheless. It's fast, frantic, and at times challenging. The animation, both the wabbits and the wizards, are top notch and the in-game tune is suitably up beat. It really begins to shine though when you drag a mate along to play Liz and compete against each other in a split screen race to see who can complete the level first. Curses and insults will be freely exchanged as you nick each others magic letters and poach the fruit. However, the one-player game is bound to lose its appeal before too long. The levels simply don't have enough variety to keep your attention beyond a couple of goes. If you haven't got a chum to play with, apart from being pretty sad, there's not much here to keep you playing for too long.