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It's a real challenge to produce a reasonable game for a 3K Ace. But Micro Maze from Hi-Tech isn't just reasonable. It's something of a challenge. For £6.50, you get a good fraction of Pacman on your very own Ace.

Packaging is neat, complete with cover illustration. The cassette bears the name 'Microsoft' as well as Hi-Tech. Surely not the Microsoft? Instructions are complete enough to get you over the rather devious loading procedure.

One slight hitch though. LOAD GRAPHICS should be in lower case. Beyond that, Micro Maze loaded and ran first time.

> Your sole aim in Micro Maze is to gobble as many radioactive dots as possible. Why radioactive I don't know. They look like perfectly ordinary dots to me. You're pursued, accurately if not relentlessly, by a couple of alien-looking aliens.

There's no power/pep pills and no chasing baddies. That's the bit that got sacrificed to the Ace memory shortage. But there are four levels of play.

If you're tough enough, clearing a whole screen of dots produces another, each with ever smarter aliens. And Hi-Tech has been kind enough to include a couple of extra mazes on the tape once you've eaten the first.

> Micro Maze does play well, considering the space it's playing in. Typing RUN starts you off in the top left hand corner and you rush round under the slightly chaotic control of the four arrow keys.

Graphics are fast and smooth, though sound is limited to a regular unchanging bleep for every square moved, plus an unglamorous raspberry when you lose. This could do with the odd pep pill.

There is a running score in the corner of the screen so a test for dots being eaten must be being made.

> Even though it is an utterly simple game, it is fun and challenging. The only letdown was my ability to jam the terrible twins in the tight corners of maze 2. I could clean up before being forced to go close enough to coax them back.

Micro Maze is a fun 3K. If you can't afford a RAMpack, it's worth more than a five-minute novelty. Hopefully, when you get a RAMpack, Hi-Tech will put as much care into some 16K programs.