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"A new experience in getting rich!" claims Millionaire's cassette jacket. It certainly is a new experience - I didn't realise earning £1,000,000 would be so boring or pointless. Admittedly I only got as far as £70,000 but it took me about three years in business to earn that much, and I couldn't be bothered to continue further to see if any exciting or different things were about to happen.

You are introduced to this strategy game by being told that you own a home computer and have written a program which you wish to market. You are willing to put £500 into the project. The decisions are up to you and these will directly influence whether or not you become a millionaire.

Your company, Software Inc., is formed and you choose whether or not you want to specialise in one type of program, and specify what makes a good program from a choice of given qualities. Starting with a terraced house for your office, you begin to do business.

The game rotates in monthly cycles. You are told about your company's programs, sales, tapes in stock, rates, assets and money borrowed and then your sales progress is depicted graphically. Next a news sheet appears with a selection of items which affect your sales.

The main part of the game involves choosing the area you are going to work at from various options, for example progamming, seeing Honest Harry which involves buying cheap but possibly dodgy programs or cassettes, selling to retailers, converting existing programs to other machines or trying to obtain a loan.

You are also given five ideas to boost your sales which can only be used once. Finally you decide how much to spend on advertising and cassette duplication. These options are repeated over and over again each month until you've earned your fortune or given up and decided to sell out.

Initially the game is quite entertaining. You choose a strategy, make some decisions and watch your sales grow. It doesn't take long before you move up to a bigger house on "The Avenue", but gradually the repetition becomes more and more tedious. As time goes by and you earn more money it becomes harder to sell programs, which only adds to the frustration.

Success or failure usually appears to relate more to random good or bad news items than to making the right decisions. However on one occasion, after being given only bad news for twelve months ranging from poor attendance at a computer sales fair to needing repair work costing £4,000, I eventually received the good news that one of my programs had been voted best of the year. This seemed like the ideal time to spend £5,000 on a TV advertisement to boost my sales sky-high. Sadly they fell. Obviously the programmers know something I don't.

No doubt this game will appeal to some people but personally I wouldn't choose to play it more than once, and would get more pleasure with a greater chance of earning a million from the newspaper's bingo.

Shingo Sugiura