When Helen posted Matchmaker for me to review she said in her accompanying letter that she thought it was basically an educational program. Some people might not agree with this view but I certainly do. As well as being a memory game, it encourages the younger members of the Dragon community to get more familiar with the keyboard. As I was asked for a quick turn round on this review I have not yet had the chance to convert it to disc, and had to put up with the slowness of cassette loading, although I was most pleased to find that there were absolutely no loading problems whatever, even though I have loaded it on many occasions.

When loaded you are asked whether you would like to see the instructions or not. These are well set out and easy to understand.

You are then given the choice of 'Easy' and 'Super Hard'. The former has five items which each appear six times and the latter has fifteen items each appearing twice only.

The top of the screen is lettered A-F and the side is numbered 1-5 and there are thirty squares of varying colours. At the commencement there is a horizontal and vertical rolling of the lines of squares, alternate rows going in opposite directions, which gives a nice touch to the game but unfortunately causes problems to the game itself.

The items are obviously set out in the same squares at the beginning of each game and rely on the Dragon's randomiser, which is notoriously bad, to select the number of times the squares move. This means that the same objects often appear in the same places in different games which means that after having played the game for a few weeks a person with a good memory could be able to complete it from the start without the opponent getting a try.

The game is for 1 to 4 players, although it is not very interesting for only one. For more players it is a good game. First you choose two squares to uncover the objects beneath. I liked the fact that either the number or the letter could be entered first. If a square has already been uncovered you are told that it is a void move and a selection out of range is ignored, allowing you another choice. If the objects match you are allowed two more squares until you fail to match when it is the next player's turn.

On a successful match, you are greeted with a quick burst of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head", and more at the end of the game. If two or more players tie for first place then the game is declared a draw as there is no clear winner. To sum up, this is a game which is simply but attractively done and I appreciated the little touches of humour in the descriptions of some of the objects.

I would have preferred more choice in ihe degree of difficulty with a least one other in between these two. My eldest son who is a zap-em freak actually enjoys playing this game so nobody should write it off as not being their type of game. There is certainly a shortage lately of any kind of educational software and more, similar programs should be encouraged.

When my Dragon was a pup we had superior educational programs even to the 'dare-I-say-it' BBC. The label states that this program will run on Dragon 32/64 or Tandy Coco 32K but I have only run it on the Dragon (both 64 and 32).