Egged On By The Chickaroo

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Not being too keen on birds, children's word games or space invaders, I approached Chickaroo by Screenplay with hesitation. I was, however, pleasantly surprised.

The game turned out to be quite an acceptable combination of all three, the star attraction being a bird named Chickaroo.

It flies across the screen laying eggs as it goes. Each egg holds a letter which can only be revealed by shooting at it.

If you think that the revealed letter fits an incomplete word shown on screen you send another little bird to collect it. Err and you will be exterminated.

This certainly took the bore dom for me out of yet another word recognition game. Children too, I'm sure, will be much more willing to play along with their parents' wishes for them to learn.

The game involves very attractive use ofcolour as well as realistic space invader sound effects, providing the sense of urgency and danger that is always attractive to the young.

It really is a case of "Bang, bang you're dead" if you fail to recognise a word correctly.

As well as the 100 words provided in two data files, the menu allows the setting up of an alternative fileof up to 50 words. Such a facility improves the game's otherwise fairly limited educational usefulness.

According to Screenplay, certain of the words in the data file are chosen so that the spelling of other words will be encouraged while guessing for the correct one.

For example, the possibilities for completing the word "IN" are many. This may in theory be a good idea, but I found it most disconcerting to be "killed off' for making up the word FIN instead of WIN.

OK, so maybe I was trying to be clever (and there's nothing like an educational game aimed at children for boosting the confidence) but surely this is rough justice.

I found the word skills required to be pretty basic. It is obviously designed for the very young.

The game claims nothing more, however, than to help develop word recognition skills in children.

Chickaroo not only achieves this, but I'm sure also retains the attention of its pupils well beyond the scope of the average teacher.

Patricia Trickett