ESP And All That

Paranormal, a collection of four Basic programs on one cassette, takes a light hearted look at the paranormal.

The first program is Numerology, based on the study of how certain numbers affect our lives.

You enter your name, date of birth, and the present date. The program then calculates your own personal number, uses it to analyse your character, and then combines this with astrological data to forecast your future over the next 24 hours.

The data can be directed to a printer should you require a hard copy.

ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) is a program designed to test your ability to predict an event which is yet to take.

The micro will select one of five symbols, and you must predict which one it has chosen. The computer then analyses the results and comments on your ESP abilities.

Reincarnation is purely for fun. Having entered your name, date of birth, and sex, the computer will make a guess at the circumstances of your last incarnation.

I was a female politician who was born in 1794 somewhere in Eastern Europe.

The final program is Biorhythms. Having entered your date of birth and today's date it displays a summary of your emotional, physical and intel lectual state over the next two days.

This program contained a small bug. Having obtained a printout of my results I chose to exit at the appropriate prompt. The program returned me to Basic but didn't switch off the printer.

No sound is employed in any of the programs and no attempt made to produce an attractive screen layout.

These are the type of novelty programs which may find their way on to the pages of some magazines and, as such, don't justify the asking price of £5.95.

I may have no ESP ability whatsoever but I can confidently predict that this collection of programs will get no higher than position number 100 in the Mongolian software charts.

Carol Barrow