Now don the purple

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Take command of the Roman Empire in 395 AD, and by raising and moving troops - and seeing that funds are available in the correct place to pay and maintain them - prevent the destruction of your Empire by the surrounding tribes and armies.

The Fall or Rome (ASP Soft ware) lasts 12 turns, each repre senting five years.

You find you need paper and pencil, because the printed map supplied, while giving the names of the provinces within the Empire, provides only the names of the surrounding tribes and not the names of their countries which you'll need. You should list these as they are displayed on the screen.

The author of this ASP Software game has done a good job of simulating history, because, while the Eastern part of the Empire can be held (and even expanded) fairly easily, it is almost impossible not to lose a fair number of the Western provinces early in the game, even on level 1.

But don't despair, you can retake them later.

Two points on which the rules make no comment. If you have insufficient funds in a province to maintain the legions present at the start of the turn, some troops will desert.

In the unlikely event that you happen to accumulate more than 255 units of cash (including the start-of-turn income) in any one province, the taxman will immediately collect 256 from you - due to the fact that alldata (except the date) is held as a series of one-byte numbers.

This method of holding the data has one - I suspect unintended - benefit. When you have completed your 12 turns and the game ends, typing RUN does not reset anything except the date, so you can continue from where you left off!

Fancy another 60 years as Emperor?

The only real complaint I have is that there is no provision to save a position and continue later from that point. This facility should be considered a must in any game such as this likely to last over an hour. Don't start a game while having your bed-time cuppa, which is what I did the first time I played it.

The various colour combi nations in this program worked fine on my monitor, but on the various TV sets I used the red-on-green maps and the red-on-blue and blue-on-red of much of the text gave a blurred, out-of-focus effect.

Despite the moans - which are really only about frills - the Fall of Rome is as good as any other game of its type, and better than most.

Michael Gilbert