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The software company currently dominating the charts is Blue Ribbon with its budget priced re-runs of Superior Software's old titles. Two of the most popular are Mr Wiz and Percy Penguin.

The first is an arcade game in which you play the part of Mr Wiz, wandering about your garden eating cherries while avoiding evil gremlins. These nasty little critters can be flattened by dropping enormous apples on their heads. To do this you dig the earth away below the apples just as a gremlin walks underneath.

Extra bonus points can be gained by eating a magic mushroom, but watch out for the gremlins, as this makes them furious.

Percy Penguin takes you to the frozen wastes of the North Pole where you battle the dangerous snobees. Blocks of ice form a maze on screen and you - controlling Percy Penguin - must try to line up three special diamond blocks by kicking them into position.

Ordinary ice blocks can be melted by pushing against them, or kicked away if there is nothing on the other side stopping them from moving. This enables you to rearrange the maze to your advantage.

Preventing you from lining up the diamond blocks are the snobees, evil weevils that track you down and gobble you up. Fortunately, a well timed kick will send an ice block to squash them flat.

The action isn't particularly fast, but it's quite difficult. The graphics are fairly ordinary compared with recent releases and there isn't much depth to the game. If you're looking for two simple, fun offerings at budget prices you won't go far wrong with these two from Blue Ribbon.

* * * Second Opinion (By Janice Murray) * * *

Percy Penguin and Mr Wiz are two typical budget releases. Once classic games, they are now considered to be quite simple both in gameplay and graphics. However, they are cheap and will provide several house of fun for all the family.

Roland Waddilove