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Special Agent comes with a book which says this cassette is for 8-12 year olds but is playable by anyone. It is an educational package but fun to play.

The story is you are a special agent for MI6, based in London. Your mission is to catch a dangerous enemy spy. To make your life a bit easier (thank goodness) you have an agent in every city, but... if your agent is spotted, the spy will kill him! Your agents send you "intelligence" reports (some not so intelligent)!! E.g. a report may be "Spy observed in capital city of USSR." So you may fly to Moscow or lie in wait at Minsk. This brings us nicely into the travelling part of the game. We look at the map which fills the whole screen and decide where to go. So, press (I) and look at the timetable for both rail and air. The journeys are to different cities at any time in the day (and night)! You never seem to bother about getting on trains at 03.00, so at the bottom of the screen we see the message "WAITING TO TRAVEL" and (eventually) "TRAVELLING". We arrive and more often than not see the cheery message your agent here is alive and, no spy!! Although, if your agent has been "knocked off" then you can hire a new one (in under a minute, isn't technology brilliant nowadays?).

This is for the loss of £200!! Some of the intelligence reports are in code. It helps if you can work out the code quickly. At every city we go to our agent there tells us one or two letters. (Why can't they tell us all of it?) You also have the choice of looking at other cities timetables (to see where the spy may go next). In the book it gives you a few lines and a picture (Wow!) about every capital city. You also have a map of Europe to help you in the book.

On the screen it tells you how much cash you've used (usually about £1,000 for me)!! It also tells us how many days we've taken and the time of day (in 24-hour) time. You can pause the game to work out messges. If you are totally stuck you can quit the game!

Fiveways are really kind and give us a keyboard overlay. The British Secret Service are always short of money (Ah!)! (So spend a litte as possible.)

Special Agent is priced £9.95 (and worth it!) and available from Fiveways Software.