Round-Up is an attempt to combine a game element with educational content, but it doesn't quite succeed in being good in either direction, sadly.

The educational point is to practise the skill of rounding up an answer to the next multiple of ten, and this is perhaps a slightly strange choice, being a fairly simple concept to grasp with more orthodox approaches.

The game resembles a poor man's version of Pac-Man with a little man scurrying around a maze collecting points (money) by passing a guard. When the guard is encountered, an addition or subtraction sum is shown at the centre of the screen, together with three "rounded" answers. The child has to touch Space when the answer is indicated which the child wishes to select. If two red guards are successfully passed and the Star Chamber is reached, then a further sum is gained.

The standard Z, X, *, ? keys are used to guide the figure through the maze, but there is no immediately obvious final point to aim for, no flashing point or even a little door. I found that the children soon became confused and then it didn't take long for them to get bored.

A wrong answer at any point brings about a rather premature end to the game, and I have never found that children do particularly well if they feel too much risk of failure.

At last, but perhaps salient point, was that the hi-score table refused to come into play for my children, even though they beat the boasted hi-score on the screen. To a child, there is no quicker turn off!

Phil Tayler