A&B Computing


Know Your Own Psi-Q

Author: Dave Carlos
Publisher: Mirrorsoft
Machine: BBC/Electron

 
Published in A&B Computing 2.02

This program is rather different because it aims to take you and your micro from this world into the world of the Supernatural! The Psi in the title stands for psychic phenomena and the program gives you the tools to investigate those of extra sensory perception (ESP) and mind-over-matter or psychokineses (PK).

Taking itself rather seriously, there is a program that tries to ascertain just how sympathetic you are to this kind of happening and it does so by asking you 108 questions in three sections each with three possible answers. Based on the work of Eysenk and Sargent (who wrote the manual) it gives you a rating and suggests what sort of response you might have on the game. I rated "sceptical" which seems about right.

The second, and probably more interesting, section is the game program which includes four varieties of activity. The first type is the card games and the two options are guessing the suit or guessing the colour. There are two options in the grid games too, you might test your clairvoyance by guessing where the targets are after their positions have been selected or precognition by selecting a position before the computer has decided their locations.

Know Your Own Psi-Q

You can play "Psi-Psubs" in which you try to shoot the submarines hidden in the grid by moving your sight, using joystick or cursor keys to do so. The fourth game is really a non-violent variation of the Psubs game but with faces instead of submarines.

The final parts of the program are the filing system on which you can store your scores over a period and then chart your progress over time and the relaxation routine which, the instructions tell me, will relax you before your Psi session.

I'm sure that there are those who will find this package fascinating and will regard it as the best thing since Space Invaders. It is certainly comprehensive and well thought out and can be good fun in a crowd - you should have seen them at the Computer Club!

Me? Well, I'm still sceptical both of the value of a program like this and of its underlying theme. But you should have known that - if you had any psychic power at all!

Dave Carlos

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