This cassette contains four games which sharpen up the basic skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Each of the sections has a title indicating the popular view of mathematics as a tortuous occupation: "sadistic subtraction", "murderous multiplication" or "diabolical division".

As games, I didn't find them particularly entertaining or addictive. The whole exercise was carried out in a laborious way with nothing but the sound effects to reward or correct the student.

The responses to the answers were fast and the initial layout was good. Some of the games offered skill levels at the start (from "beginner's" to "know-it-all") and all of them adjusted the level of difficulty as you went along.

However, you did have to wait a long time before any result showed (having to complete 50 sums!) which I found a little daunting.

A good feature in the division game was the multiple choice format which enhances the skill of approximation. A poor aspect of the multiplication game was the low-res blocks which you had to count up; occasionally there were joined and proved hard to define.

M.P.