A Christmas twin pack from Cable Software offers a zap-em down game, plus a car race.

Wasps is a Space Invader type program, without too much of a sting. This machine code program is very fast and well-written, but apart from killing off wasps, the program doesn't offer a great deal.

Four ships defend your planet, while the wasps bomb your bases. As I hate wasps, I liked the sound effects for a dead wasp best of all - a kind of frazzle sound.

So with the first screenful wiped out, the next swarm move in. Failure to kill the wasps means they land on your planet and eat your base.

At the end, your score is displayed, along with your Commander status - over 65536 and you're on level 1.

A high score chart would have added just that little bit extra. However, Wasps does show what the Dragon can do in machine code, and sold alone would have been good value.

Dragon Racer was very much a let-down. The aim is to travel without going out of control and crashing, or blowing up.

Drawn in hi-resolution graphics (black and white), half of the screen is devoted to numeric information (speed, gear, revs) and the track is a narrow strip down the screen's centre.

You'll need both joysticks to move. One acts as the gearbox, the other is your brake/accelerator and steering. I found it hard to master both joysticks, let alone read the dashboard. The maximum speed is a flickering display - on the highest level it was like trying to read a numeric stopwatch.

Eventually, I got moving - slick, fast gear changes are needed to avoid blowing your engine - and I chugged along at 50 mph. Then, just like on the M1, some idiot appears behind; if you don't move out of the way, he'll just go straight into you.

The higher your level, the faster your travel; curiously, on the toughest level, I made the best progress.

The sound is good, but I would have preferred to have sound only when moving, and not all the time!

As so little of the screen has been utilised, a system of dials or some other form of visual display would have added to the program. After all, if it can be done on flight simulators, then why not on Formula One?