Part of the recent link-up between Superior and Acornsoft has been the welcome re-release of many Acornsoft classics, like Elite and Revs. Now, some months after the Compact versions, we have two collections of early Acornsoft hits available and they are ideal for people who never collected them at the time.

Volume 1 is perhaps the stronger of the two with Magic Mushrooms, Maze, Planetoid and Rocket Raid. I've never been a fan of Maze - a self-explanatory title - but both Planetoid and Rocket Raid are welcome trips back down nostalgia lane to a time when games were simpler! Both involve horizontal scrolling and shooting; both are still fun.

Magic Mushrooms never perhaps received the attention it deserved on first release - as well as being an excellent platform game, it has the option of being a game designer, which is great fun to use.

Volume 2 is 'classics' time with Starship Command, Arcadians, Labyrinth and Meteors. All of these have served as the inspiration for so many other games that it is a shock to return to the originals and see just how crude they can be. However, they are all still very playable.

I hope that these collections are successful. It would be nice if the current craze for compilations led to a systematic re-release of many companies' backlog.

This stuff is our heritage. If you're new to BBC games playing, then do look back. I think you might be surprised!