Terrified by that mass of games software that confronts you each time you walk into your local computer store? Worried that you might not have the right games in your collection? Well, you can stop getting all hot and bothered! C&VG is proud to present a comprehensive rundown of the best games around for the Atari range of home computers. Craig Thackray has been delving into the mass of software around, and has come up with a few winners.

AE by Broderbund is a 3D game which loads each detailed scene from disc after playing a selection of wonderful little ditties. A band of six alien invaders then dart in front and behind objects on the screen in a very acceptable manner. To continue through the game, you must kill three complete sets of aliens.

Bandits follows a much more standard screen format. The game itself is not totally enthralling, but it is an excellent game in terms of graphical presentation and the final touches incorporated are magnificent.

When the game begins there is a small spaceship on a lunar surface ready to fly off from a launch pad into infinity. A small astronaut transport vehicle bounces its way off the screen and the spaceship launches, reeling the title page onto the screen.

However something is wrong! There is an apple sign by the word Bandits. But fear not! A termite runs onto the screen and, in a flurry of activity, eats the apple to the core, leaving only an Atari sign behind!

Throughout the game there are nice details like this - putting this game a cut above the rest. Bandits is a must for Atari owners with a liking for Galaxian-style games.

One of the most realistic simulations that computers can create is Pinball. Several great software authors have risen from pinball simulations, Bill Budge being the best known. Bill's Raster Blaster pinball simulation is now regarded as one of the landmarks in software. True to the tradition of Raster Blaster, Pinball Construction Set is the most sophisticated piece of software available. Based on Smalltalk, a variation of a mainframe language, it is entirely graphics controlled and enables construction of any pinball table conceivable. It is an essential part of the Atari software collector's kit, and at £30 it has to be about the best value program available.

Night Mission is Sublogic's offering, from the author of Flight Simulator on the IBM PC now available for the Atari as Flight Simulator. Its unusual qualities are that over 40 variables can be altered and that the sound comes solely out of the keyboard speaker and doesn't sound too bad at that.

For the cassette player owner, this is the best buy, unless you can contact Synapse Software in the States and get hold of their program Slam Ball, which again is innovative in its concept. Although I have never seen it in the flesh, the message through the grapevine is that the screen scrolls around following the ball.

David's Midnight Magic and Raster Blaster are very similar and both of these excellent games, along with Night Mission, are included as playable demonstrations in the Pinball Construction Set.

There are many followers of War Games who play on paper maps covered by hexagonal patterns with cardboard pieces. These games are easily converted to computers. As a result, there are many War Games available, but they are more prolific on the Atari than any other machine.

The three War Games I would recommend are Operation Whirlwind, Eastern Front and Legionnare. The latter two are by Chris Crawford, a master of scrolling games and co-author of De Re Atari. All of these games scroll and have highly detailed maps.

For disc owners, Operation Whirlwind is by far the most sophisticated and has the most elaborate title page I have ever seen. For those who prefer a little faster action, I suggest Legionnaire, supplied on cassette in 16K by Avalon Hill.

The last on my short list is Eastern Front, originally sold on cassette by Atari Program Exchange and then bought by Atari on cartridge in a very professional package with instructions in the form of a war diary.

Adventuring is an area of games playing taken to religious lengths by some and covers the largest range of titles available for the Atari. Due to the original nature of many games, several unlikely games will crop up in this section.

Pure adventure enthusiasts will know that there are two main adventure companies, Infocom and Adventure International. However, two British companies, Level 9 and Channel 8, are now producing very high quality adventures too.

The best value text adventure available is Snowball by Level 9 at £9.90 which has over 7,000 locations.

For those who enjoy defeat, a strong favourite is Empire of the Overmind by Avalon Hill, still a favourite amongst masochists and members of Mensa alike. If you believe in doing three impossible things before breakfast, then pop out and get out today.

The best Adventures available are those in the Infocom range. They supply the most intricate Adventures available. Each of their latest releases covers two sides of a disc and is supplied with large amounts of extra documentation such as ID cards, postcards, games boards and numerous testimonials. All are supplied in intricate packaging and have the professional air of a best selling record album.

Interaction is in a dialect as close to English as you are likely to see for some years. Full conversions with characters is encouraged and the world in which you play seems boundless.

It is now possible to buy blueprints of buildings, maps of the underworld, t-shirts, brass lanterns, clues in invisible ink, posters, almost everything an Adventurer could need.

The games they have released are the Zork trio, Deadline, Starcross, Witness, Suspended, Planetfall and Enchanter.

If you own a disc drive, then buy the latest Infocom game, whatever it might be. I guarantee you won't be seen again for months.

Beginners, or those with limited memory (all you 16K Atari 400 owners, for example) will find more joy with Channel 8. These are relatively easy - by Infocom standards - but very enjoyable and reasonably cheap.

For the Adventurer who wants to play classics, the Adventurer's guru Scott Adams, offers very humorous adventures through Adventure International. Two modern classics released by Adventure International are based on Frogger and Pacman. Preppie I and Preppie II written by Russ Wetmore, also set new standards in software quality and will be mentioned later.

For those who prefer graphics in their life they can turn to the offerings of several companies. Technically, Sounds Of Egypt is by far the best graphic adventure available - the pictures are highly detailed and animated with scrolling clouds and bouncing camels. However, it is so incredibly difficult to converse with and impossible to complete that it is barely worth playing, let along buying.

The Scott Adams series is now available in graphic format, called SAGAs. I'm sure they will soon become famous for their incredible flickering graphics. In order to achieve multitudinous colours, the programmer has timed the colours to flick every 60th of a second for the television system used in America. The desired effect however fails horribly on the British system. If you are not friends with your local optician then don't even consider it!

The most enjoyable graphic adventures I played were the On-Line Sierra series. Special interest should be directed to The Dark Crystal, my suggestion for the best graphical adventure.

Synapse Software are to arcade adventures what Heineken is to lager. Shamus II, Pharaoh's Curse and Necromancer are their best releases in this line. I recommend all of these, my own soft spot being towards Necromancer. The animation on all of them is superb, the control over each is very well thought out and the graphics are beyond compare.

For those who prefer to spend a more reasonable amount on a game, then Lone Raider, the latest release by Atari costing £15.00, is perfect.

It is one of the few programs available that plays music while loading and is a very professional three part action adventure, written by an English programmer, Justin Whitaker.

The official Frogger, by Sega, always looks good. However, there are now two official Froggers for the Atari, one from America and the other by our very own Parker Brothers.

I can see no difference between the Online Sierra disk version and that from Parker Brothers. Both are perfect copies of the arcade game and are immense fun.

One other striking example is Preppie! by Adventure International. Although innovative at the time, it is now rather average and I find the movement sluggish. I confess to enjoying the tunes it plays as you are run over.

Dig Dug is, in comparison, a new release in the arcades. To date I have found four versions of the game: O'Reily's Mine by Datasoft, Diamonds by English Software, Anteater and Dig Dug by Atari.

Dig Dug from Atari, is my personal favourite, mainly because I find it relaxing. The documentation explains every aspect of the game to the full. O'Reily's Mine... well, what can you say about it? Nice title page, shame about the game. Diamonds by English Software digresses too much from the original for me and I find the graphics tacky and the game laborious. However, for £10 it is reasonable. I'm afraid I just don't like Anteater.

A game I did enjoy in the arcades was Q*Bert. There are now many versions of the game available and of these I have collected the best three.

The most accurate version presently available is Pharaoh's Pyramid. It is also part adventure and I found it a very satisfying game to play.

Flip And Flop is brought to you by the people who brought you Astro-Chase. It is a wonderful piece of animated graphics, played on a scrolling 3D chess board on several levels.

Juice is by the author of Kid Grid. It is very slick, but I found the playfield tediously small and the goals to be achieved too high.

Parker Brothers have bought the rights to Q*Bert and, if they follow in their present tradition, they will release a perfect arcade copy.

Pacman is a huge area now. However, out of the silicon maze two playable versions stand out. For traditionalists, Jawbreaker is fast and the ghosts are very well created. However, Preppie! II by Adventure International, from level four onwards, is a much more enthralling prospect with all the usual professional grace of a Russ Wetmore game.

Other notables include Ghost Hunter, Pacman, Ms. Pacman, Tumble Bugs, Mouskattack and K-Razy Antiks - a novel digression.

Scramble and Defender games have been popular since their conception in '81. Usually any game with a flying battle wagon on a scrolling landscape is thought of as one of the two - that's how I think of them anyway.

This is another area in which Synapse Software rules. Mike Potter is their leading programmer in this field and his mastery of horizontal and vertical scrolling is stunning. Titles to his credit are Protector (versions I and II), Shadow World and Nautilus.

By far my favourite by Mike Potter is Nautilus, because of the excellent selection of colours, the slick scrolling and the deep bassy tune it plays on the title page. For this novel game to be really enjoyable, two players are needed. The computer is well above human skills and gets very depressing very quickly.

Both Nautilus and Shadow World scroll different sections of the screen in different directions and each player can appear at two places on the screen.

Shadow World is very close to Defender, the major difference being that the invading aliens descend in Battlestars and then pour out.

The objective is to destroy the bases when their defences are down and before they land. This is an excellent one or two player game, although it takes some time to relate the rules to the game. It's one of these games which grow on you, but I can envisage it getting dull after a while.

Protector II places you at the controls of a Needle Fighter as the heroic saviour of your home planet. It is a rather boring theme for a rather boring game - not as enjoyable as Protector I.

Perhaps the best scramble-type game available is Fort Apocalypse. It is 32K, but it utilises fine scrolling and very large sprites.

The hardest Scramble game I have found is Sea Dragon by Adventure International. It is ridiculously difficult, but it is possible to skip levels by inserting a joystick into port 4 and pressing your fire button.

Adventure International are reported as saying that it is made that difficult to give long lasting value for money and challenge. My personal belief is that Russ Wetmore is a sadistic and cruel programmer! Those who liked Preppie! and Preppie! II and want a Scramble game then Sea Dragon will be for them.

Purists will find Airstrike and Airstrike II very enjoyable. For me, they just hit the spot. Both are by English Software for £14.95 - a meagre price for such excellent games.

Atari also have a version of Scramble, which is now well known. Caverns Of Mars is a poorly made, roughly finished, overpriced game with little resemblance to the original, a difference which works negatively!

I place a warning here. Caverns Of Mars III has been released, called Phobos. It is a truly horrendous game - avoid it like the plague.

There are four particularly striking variations of Defender. Defender by Atari is the best copy of the arcade game, and I personally prefer it to another strong contender, Repton. However, many of these who helped me to compile this article preferred Repton. The final decision is based on personal opinion, and whether or not you have a disc drive.

Sky Blazer is rather loosely based on both Defender and Scramble. It involves undertaking several totally impossible missions. The graphics are boring and the scrolling is very jerky using none of the built-in scrolling facilities - I loathe this game.

Choplifter also uses software scrolling. However, it is very smooth and there are many reviews around. It is, overall, a very well-produced game, available on both disc and cartridge.

The remainder of this section covers various miscellaneous themes. Pogoman by Computer Magic is a smashing little program. You play the part of a public service employee who turns out the street lights during a blackout from a pogostick. It does, however, boil down to bouncing over the various objects which scroll towards you.

On later sheets you must jump over cars, ducks and a unicyclist whilst avoiding the killer parrot. Throughout the game a very relaxing tune plays continually preventing you becoming frustrated - rather like a sedative.

A noveal approach to scramble was adopted by Zaxxon and the Synapse spin-off Blue Max. Zaxxon, like many of the arcade copies on disc and cassette, is licensed to Datasoft. It is a very close copy, especially the disc version, and although pretty, neither the disc or cassette versions feels like the arcade game. It was also evident that the program was not fully debugged, with what can only be described as glitches at the top and bottom of the screen.

Blue Max turns you into a British Fighter Pilot flying over the front line to destroy three prime targets in a German city.

The first few hits on your plane from ack-ack or enemy bi-planes knock out your manoeuvrability, machine guns, bombs or fuel tanks and finally you dive out of the sky, crashing into the ground.

Every few miles you must land on an airstrip then take off. To progress through the game, you must bomb primary targets marked by the computer.

The game can continue for up to an hour, although you only have one life with such ratings as Kamikaze Trainee. From its stunning title music to its final, definite crash, this is a marvellous program, which must go down on my shortlist very near the top.

It is pointless to point out that the best copy of Donkey Kong for the Atari and probably any computer is the cartridge version of Donkey Kong by Atari. It is modelled on the American version of Donkey Kong and so may seem slightly different in its screen layout and the order in which screens appear.

All this follows on the recent tradition by Atari for a move towards as close a copy of the arcade original as the computer's hardware will allow.

A game soon to be released by Atari is Jungle Hunt - already available for the Atari VCS. This multi-stage game follows the exploits of an explorer attempting to find Jane and release her from the cannibals. The graphics routines are very complex, especially the co-ordination of player missiles with the screen memory. A review of this game will appear in this magazine at a later date. Donkey Kong Junior is also planned for release soon and, although I have not seen it yet, but it should be good. For those who already have Donkey Kong, this is the perfect sequel. However, I find the arcade version impossible.

Rather like Michael Jackson's album Thriller, Miner 2049'er has been in the top ten sales for the Atari for months. This was a first attempt at a game for the Atari by Big Five, a leading software house for the TRS-80. This game has been reviewed by almost every magazine available, and highly acclaimed by all.

Its huge sales have led to many spin-offs for other machines and Bounty Bob now returns in Miner II, called Scraper Caper. Is should soon arrive in this country. If you don't already have the game, then buy it.

For those who cannot afford such expensive, then Leggit is an excellent game at only £5.50. It includes an animated title page multi-channel music and all the other features you would expect for an Atari game. The game rates as the best value game for the Atari. I hope that Ultimate Play The Game will follow Imagine's lead and release some of their excellent Spectrum games for the Atari at £5.50.

Leggit is almost as demanding as Spies Demise (now available for the BBC as Corporate Climber through Dynabyte). This game is very simple. You must run your spy between ascending and descending lift-like objects, finding clues and, as each end of the screen is reached, you rise a level to the next ramp. The game is very demanding and I find a Kempston Competition Pro joystick perfect. At the top of each screen you are given a piece of code and eventually, after completing eight screens, you decode the message and send it off to Penguin Software.

The program plays tunes continually and has options for keyboard, joystick and paddle play. I have played this game almost continually for a month and enjoy it immensely.

Recently released was The Spy Strikes Back which is a graphical adventure, as opposed to a version of Donkey Kong. Again it is an excellent game.

Perhaps the most appreciated game in my collection by all my play testers was Mountain King by CBS (previously K-Byte).

After pressing start, the adventurous player dances to Grieg's In The Hall Of The Mountain King from the Pier Gynt Suite, until Start is pressed again. To continue the game, the player must collect 100 diamonds from a choice of thousands scattered liberally around the screen before moving on to the next stage.

When all these have been collected, the player must search for the magic flame. As you approach the flame, a background tune increases in volume. The flame flickers, occasionally, but it is not visible and you must use your torch to find it.

The final task is to leave the mountain avoiding the king's minions while more bars of Peer Gynt are played, increasing in speed all the time. The game involves a great deal of scrolling and has splendid animation of all characters, especially the Arachnid who patrols the floor of the subterranean kingdom. The tunes are complete utilising many of the octaves available on the Atari. This is another one of those "must buy" games.

Electronic Arts entrant is Hard Hat Mack. This game utilises the entire 48K available for the Atari, and is only three screens. It uses mode eight graphics, hoping to use artifacting. Unfortunately, in the UK it is black and white. If it were not for this problem, the graphics would be very detailed. It is packaged in a very well-produced folder, including interviews with the programmers.

Last year, the Computer Game of the Year award didn't go to any of those arcade hits like Pacman or Defender as it had in previous years, but instead it went to Wayout, an incredible 3D maze game.

Wayout's graphics are terrifyingly fast and smooth, with a choice of 26 unique and claustrophobic mazes, ranging from open, spacious mazes to tight and narrow intricate ones. There are gales blowing through many, which send you off course and eventually result in your failure.

To hinder you further, the Pentangle appears (a vertically rotating rectangle) whose playful antics centre around annoying you by stealing your compass and map marking equipment. This equipment is used for displaying a top view of the expanding maze as you explore it.

Wayout, not surprisingly, is a 48K disc-based game, but for those of you with unexpanded machines, be frustrated no longer. From the makers of Wayout comes an equally incredible game called Capture The Flag on an 8K cartridge. It is effectively an action version of Wayout with music, enabling up to two people to play.

The purpose of the invader is to get to the exit, avoiding a fatal encounter with the defender. The defender must destroy the invader by slamming into him. The graphics are as stunning as Wayout's, if a little slower.

The remainder of the article is devoted to original games which do not come under any of my artistically oppressive classifications.

Other than action adventure games, Synapse are well known for releasing totally original game concepts. Of the games they have released, the two most easily available are Picnic Paranoia and Claim Jumper.

Picnic Paranoia is the most novel of the two and plays a very good rendition of 'Flight Of The Bumble Bee' from the Carnival of the Animals. Soon you'll be able to spot a computer user by whether or not he whistles Beethoven when he's happy!

The title page introduces each character by name as they walk, fly, crawl, or slide onto the screen, whilst George uses code to spell the name of the game, fly swatter in hand. In the game, you protect your food from the ants who crawl on to steal your booty. You have to protect the food on the tables with the aid of a fly swatter and occasionally a can of insect killer which acts rather like a bomb.

To aid the ants, however, is their secret weapon, the deadly wasp which, I might add, splats with wonderful finality. Overall, the game is rather lengthy and not fast enough.

Claim Jumper only works as a two player game, and only then if both players are evenly matched and violent. Basically it is a variation on Boot Hill, varying only in that it involves collecting gold, converting it into cash and then storing it in the bank. The game became boring very quickly and now I only play it to listen to the music.

About the latest release from Synapse is Drelbs, a very silly game. The first phase of this two phase game is based on a board of rotating fences which must be moved to form squares.

Preventing you is The Face, a stripped maggot and an evil monster which has the dastardly task of destroying your squares. The maggot moves around the edges of the screen, shooting into the central play area and unleashing bullets which rebound around the maze area of fences.

Occasionally a girl's face will appear in one of the previously built squares. This is your cue to dash to your heart-throb to receive a slobbery kiss! Eventually, when you have t completed as many boxes as is possible, large numbers of Drelbs will appear in the boxes. You must then run into these squares to continue to phase two.

Here all you need to do is to avoid The Face while collecting Drelbs and transporting them to safety - in other words, run over the creatures which look like you in a frantic dash. Overall, this is a great game to play although progressing through the levels is slow.

To date, Atari's most astonishing game is Pole Position, the well known 3D car racing game taken from the arcades.

On the first track, you have to set a fast time to get a good position on the grid for the main race.

The secret to the game is the fast realistic action, the thrill of screaming around corners at 160mph while avoiding the other cars on the track. If you are only going to buy one game, then this is the one you should get. I may be repeating myself here, but I promise this is the last time I will say it (he said nose growing with every utterance).

Also from Atari is Tennis, very similar to the Activision version on the Atari VCS. I personally loathe the game, particularly as I am continually thwarted by the vindictive attitude of the computer opposition. I have won three points out of four full games.

For those of you who like chess, Sargon II answers all your needs. As well as being able to play a good game of chess, you can also start the game from any position. This is useful for solving newspaper chess problems. There is a choice of levels from novice (which beats me every time) to expert.