Whatever you enjoy doing on your Electron, writing games or education programs or just playing around, this program is without doubt a real boon. It lets you produce beautifully fluid-smooth animation in minutes with a minimum of difficulty.

A sprite, for the uninitiated, is a block of graphics which can be moved around the screen pixel by pixel giving smooth movement. The micro takes care of deleting and moving the image, leaving the background underneath undamaged.

The package consists of three definer programs, some ready made sprites - although it's more fun to make your own - and about twenty machine code routines, each incorporating different features and using varying amounts of memory.

Writing, changing and using the sprites is simplicity itself, with the use of the resident integer variables and calls to machine code routines from your Basic program. All this is explained in the comprehensive manual.

Also supplied are two demonstration games complete with listings. However these do not do the sprites justice, being simple and uninspiring.

What puts this program way ahead of other packages available is its many features. These include a collision detector, preset flight paths, extra-large super sprites, an amazing enlargement facility, and up to 48 sprites at once, each of which can have two alternating images instant animation as the sprite moves.

Simonsoft Sprites V2 has to be one of the best things for programmers wanting to write good programs since the Electron itself.

Andrew Oldham