On seeing the exciting picture on the cassette sleeve and the title, I eagerly loaded in the game hoping for a brilliant rework of the old favourite Defender.

On *RUNning the program, the title screen popped up and rather a feeble version of the Star Wars theme tune was played whilst the main program was loaded. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be an educational game! When the main program is loaded, you choose whether you want to be tested on addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. Then the game begins.

You control what looks like an ambulance (which is quaintly called the Manoeuvrable Firing Base on the cassette inlay) positioned at the bottom of the screen. This may be moved left and right with the cursor keys and a missile fired in order to hit an alien moving very slowly across the screen at a random height. If you manage to hit it, a question comes up in the middle of the screen. If you manage to get it right, score is incremented. If you get it wrong, you simply try to hit another alien. You lose a life if you let an alien move to the other side of the screen.

I have to criticise several things about this program. Firstly, the age of the children for which this program is aimed at is not made clear. Secondly, the user is not given the chance to retry a question if he/she gets it wrong. Thirdly, there is no variety. Lastly, graphics and sound effects could be improved a great deal to attract the child's attention and the meaningless story on the cassette inlay could be replaced with some decent instructions.

There are many educational programs available for the BBC which are much more interesting.

Shingo Sugiura