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J. C. Bamford Excavators approached Acornsoft and asked them to develop a game around their well-known digger to support their own promotions. Surprisingly perhaps, the answer was in the affirmative. JCB Digger is now available for all BBC owners to play.

The Digger is based on an island (there are two in the game) and the landscape is mapped out for us in the documentation. Points are gained by shovelling up the various types of landscape as well as picking up the 'Meanies' which inhabit the islands and dumping them in the sea. It has to be the sea, one of the lakes will not do. There are three JCBs per go and an extra one can be gained by amassing enough points.

Controls are for the keyboard (a bit awkward at first but eventually mastered) or joystick. The front shovel mops up the forest and undergrowth, stoney ground, etc. while the back shovel can be used to dig holes (small or large) into which, hopefully, the Meanies will fall. You then have to dig furiously to fill in the hole behind them before they have time to wake up and resume being mean.

Sound can be turned on and off and there is the now usual pause button. Every time you put eight Meanies to sleep, you get another different coloured and more difficult bunch to deal with. One of the highlights of any game is when the Meanie avoids your shovel and jumps up into the cab, dispossessing the driver and trundling off the screen.

The graphics are pretty good with the detail of the JCB, the landscape and even the swell of the sea. The sideways scrolling is smooth enough but a little jerky vertically. This is to do with the number of pixels which have to be moved at a time and certainly does not spoil an excellent game overall. It's the sort of game which is not too difficult to play and demands that you keep on practising to improve on previous performances.

Great fun and available on cassette for the new Acorn only combined 40/80 track disc format.