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Time Traveller is a fascinating idea for a program on any microcomputer. The idea is to move through various periods in British history, scoring points as you go and finally amassing a total that admits you to the 20th century.

One of the first things you find about program operation is that almost any key press will shoot you to the next stage, so be wary of tapping thoughtfully on the keyboard. Each period offers a number of multiple choice questions and finally a form of maze game to finish. The range of questions is small and naturally as you play again and again, the questions do repeat themselves although it is rare to get an exact correspondence of choices for the answer. I thought that the questions for each period were well chosen and they succeeded in destroying some myths about the time in question.

The games which finish off each section are all in Mode 5 and are similar in style because they have to use the same routines (the miserly Beeb's memory again - roll on the Aries or second processors!). The variation in content comes from different locations and characters. The bronze age involves, rather unimaginatively, a forest and a pack of wolves. The Romano-British period makes use of a crude Roman font (corners like a playing card). At the start of this game, it would be nice if a parent or teacher could induce a pause in the action for a discussion about the different elements making up the fort, to make up for the lack of labelling in the display. Similarly with the 11th century bishops in the cathedral and the 16th century courtiers.

When you finally get the necessary 200,000 points, this time gate welcomes you to the 20th century. If you make it through to Victorian England without the necessary points then you can choose which age to return to in order to get the required 200,000. If you want to start all over again, the Break key does the trick and re-initialises all but the imaginary high scores of a chap called Simon. The only way to get rid of the program entirely is to turn off the computer. The program cleverly uses the available memory space, changing HIMEM about, using Mode 7 for text and Mode 5 for games. There are lots of GOTOs and abbreviations which make it difficult to follow or make personal amendments. I couldn't even list the DATA after line 18.

Time Traveller is a very successful attempt to make the learning of some basic historical facts a lot of fun. The games are light relief and are justified despite the restrictions they place upon the 'educational' content. As I said earlier, roll on the memory expansions. On disc, with separate files for each period, this program would become greatly more useful but in the meantime it rates as an excellent attempt.