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Some software firms are just determined to fill an entire issue by themselves! When eight tapes slip (or rather squash) through your letterbox, you know you're in for a hard day bashing some keys.

The Arcade has already looked at Tynesoft's Wet Zone back in April, and covered Ian Botham's Test Match for the Electron last month. Their releasing policy is diverse, to say the least. All games are claimed to be Model B and Electron compatible, there are a number of cheap budget titles, some mid-range and a handful of excellent full-price games. Known as covering the market range, I think.

Shall we start with the cheapest or the worst? Comes to much the same really with this pack of four games for £8.95.

Trek 2 is probably the most interesting, although I could never understand the compulsion to write Star Trek games for the Beeb - only Mr. Spock's consoles could tell us how many variations there are! The game plays much like all of these with a sector map displaying Klingons and the like, energy and phaser levels and a star display. From here on in it's just a matter of doding from space sector to space sector, zapping those pesky baddies and moving to the next galazy where gone before boldly no man has. [Remind me to book Dave up for some adult literacy classes - Ed]

And so to a vaguely similar idea, Bozo The Brave. Faced with a grid map, you move from square to square trying to guess where be gold, where be dragons. But don't worry, the plague is bound to get you if the boredom doesn't. There is an element of fighting brigands or warriors but, sadly, this is all done by the computer.

Space Caverns is a game that you must have typed in from magazine listings at least one in your life - left, right and booster takes you through the tortuous caverns of some deserted planet lost in space, lost in time. Somewhere I'm sure there is a mountain of dire game concepts that companies rework just to give their inlay artists a chance to confuse the public into thinking they are buying something wild and original. Not this time, you ain't.

Finally, with a certain inevitability, we come to Cylon Invasion. I've seen this before, you've seen this before and the best we can hope is that Tynesoft obviously hadn't. Once again you must destroy the space fleet before their energy bombs destroy Earth though, if this is all Earth has to offer, I reckon we'd be better off under the Cylons.

A lot of people will no doubt buy this boxed package of four games, thinking that if even one is bad then they've still got three playable games for under £9. The problem is that the box contains one playable game and four bad ones...

Dave Reeder