Gee, it looks like King’s Quest VIII, it smells like King’s Quest VIII, it tastes like King’s Quest VIII...so what is it, anyway?  Bend over, boys and girls, it’s...Torin’s Passage.  Sierra On-Line, Inc. has unleashed the venerable Al Lowe on its latest family title.  Or was this Al’s idea?

	I reluctantly mention that I had a multitude of system crashes while playing this game -- on Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and in DOS as well.  Saving and restoring were a nightmare.  After downloading a rather lengthy, imposing looking "What-To-Do-If-THIS-Happens-To-You" text file, and another patch file, my problems were just about solved (insistent as I am on running certain TSR’s).  There, I said it.  Don’t be daunted.  Chin up.  It will most likely work on your system but you may need...The Patch.  

	Torin stars Mike Shapiro as Torin, blonde hero on steroids, and as Boogle, adorable pink and green shape-changer.  In a plot stamped from the cutest ol’ cookie-cutter ever, Torin, heir to the throne of "The Lands Above, descends into the strata of the "The Lands Below".  His quest?  To rescue his parents from the sorceress Lycentia who has stolen them for reasons unapparent to our hero.  So he does, and they live happily ever after.  Oh, yawn, right?  But wait, don’t throw up yet.  There’s more.  Believe it or not, given the above too-trite-to-trot description, this game works.  It charmed the pants off me.  Whaddya mean, "Put them back on now?"  All right, all right.  

	As usual, Sierra’s fleet of designers, animators and artists are to be praised, as Torin is absolutely breathtaking.  Just about every scene is stunning, dotted with whimsical trees and shrubs and ridiculous, unlikely-looking flourishing things -- giant this and mutant that.  Shapiro’s Torin is engaging and believable, if a touch too bland.  But we like him.  We want him to find that pesky sorceress. Meeting each new character also keeps us in constant anticipation.  They are inevitably interesting (with the exception of Queen Di --ho hum gag dialog-- and perhaps the Sap Tree).  Keep an eye out for the Assistant Director / Stage Manager in the land of Tenebrous -- very nice work by Shelly Rae Emil.

	Five strata surround the Lands’ core, each representing a "chapter," as it were.  The gamer solves general adventure-style puzzles but in order to proceed to the world below must solve a more challenging logic puzzle.  This design provides a nice "hill-and-valley" game progression, and as is becoming the norm these days, an innovative on-line hint facility is available.

	OK.  Here’s the rub.  I enjoyed playing Torin.  Really.  But what I missed was seeing enough of what I have long perceived to be the slightly mottled and off-beat hand of Al Lowe throughout the production.  It’s right there in the credits, though: "Designer, Writer: Al Lowe".  Had I not seen tiny slices of the intangible hand, I might have said, “OK, fine.  Straight family-style adventure.  There’s a market for it...Boy Saves Parents, Regains Birthright...why not?  But right there in Chapter Two, in the Land of Escarpa, was one of the funniest and most bizarre scenarios I have come across in quite a while.  Big, blonde, Nordic Torin walks from his Technicolor Disney-like world into a black and white TV sitcom complete with the inane dialog, laugh track and fake live studio audience.  He has walked onto the set of "The Bitternuts," encountering a hilarious parody of that fifties and sixties genre complete with an announcer and a tacky theme song.  I laughed out loud.  A lot.  And wanted more.  And played on. And waited.  And played on.  And waited...to no avail.

	To be fair, there were other nice tongue-in-cheek touches and mildly weird situations (such as a cute takeoff on Sam & Max), but my appetite had been so whetted early on for the hilarious that the rest was somewhat anticlimactic.  I smiled again.  I enjoyed the puzzles.  I reveled in the visuals.  But I did not laugh out loud again.  My insatiable lust for the truly twisted had apparently taken over and could not be totally appeased.  This is probably more my fault than that of the designer, however, and will hopefully not happen to all players.

	King’s Quest fans will love Torin.  I, too, found a lot here with which to fall in love.  It is a gorgeous-to-behold, delightful game for the whole family.  And don’t think it’s all downhill from "The Bitternuts," although it might have helped if instead we had seen "Designer, Writer: John Dowe"... but Al will keep us coming back for more.  I’ll bet on it.