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In the days before computer games, pinball was my game and I still enjoy exercising my flipper fingers occasionally. With this package, I can do more because I can actually design my own table.

The sad truth is that the designing proved to be more fun then the playing though there are a few areas which could have been better planned.

There are five ready made tables which can be played or modified depending on your mood. The package is quite difficult to understand at first because of the number of options available but the icon menus do help enormously.

The first screen which you are presented with has the table occupying the left half of the screen with option icons to the right. The space in between shows the range of table features such as flippers, kickers and rollovers. Although the table has a fixed shape when it appears, everything can be redesigned, even the perimeter walls.

Changing the shape of the main structure of the table is no easy matter. The shapes are literally stretched across the table but without a fine-tuning system errors are hard to correct.

Once this laborious task has been completed, the positioning of the features is equally naccurate and time-consuming but mistakes are more easily rectified because you are moving solid shapes. Any number of these features can be chosen and you just keep adding until you are content wth the layout.

Adding patterns and designing a title is the next stage and is purely cosmetic. This phase does have a magnifying feature which gives the ability to control individual pixel blocks. There is a choice of three colours but the designs play no part in the game and do not form barriers to the movement of the ball.

Normally this would satisfy most people but this program goes one step further. The top can be lifted off the machine to reveal the underlying electronics. Using a screwdriver or pliers icon, the various game's features can be electrically linked in groups of up to three. Hitting all of these linked features during a game will result in a special bonus score which is also decided upon at this stage, as is the sound effect which accompanies a hit.

The finished game can then be tried and when you are happy that this is the game you want, you can save it.

The version which I reviewed was on disk, but I notice from their ads that the game is expected out on cassette in the near future. How this will transfer to tape I cannot say; it does seem more suited to disk systems but I'll have to wait and see.

As I said at the beginning, I found the designing of the game to be more enjoyable than the game itself. If the table ran to two or three screens it could have been challenging.