On the software front, the Electron is well catered for, albeit in an odd sort of way.

The Electron does have a good measure of software compatibility with the BBC Micro, though slight differences between the machines mean that not all BBC software will run.

The reason for this incompatibility is that the Electron doesn't support Teletext Mode 7 - and many BBC programs have title pages that are written in Mode 7 (if not the whole program is!).

If it's just a matter of title pages, and the main program is written in any other BBC mode - you're lucky. It means that only the title page will appear as corrupted, while the rest should work.

If the program listing is in Basic then you should be able to LOAD it and modify the program by replacing the Mode 7 statements.

Acornsoft - Acorn's own software house - had the jump on other software houses in producing packages to run on the Electron and has the following assortment in stock:

This is software directly transferred from the BBC Micro and consists of 36 programs on cassette producing a range of pictures and patterns in colour. Some of the more notable are: recursively-defined curves, rotating three-dimensional shapes and brilliant landscapes.

A book also accompanies both the Electron and BBC versions of the program - written by John Cownie - giving screen shots of the creative graphics on-screen and explaining how they are developed (see the picture). It sells for £9.95 (and an extra £7.50 for the accompanying book).

One of the best strategy games for the BBC has also been 'ported over' to work on the Electron. As Captain of a battle starship, you have to "fight off invading enemy spaceship - before going into combat, you are given a briefing on the facilities available on the battleship" (See Figure 1). Because joysticks are not yet available for the Electron, the program can be operated only from the keyboard - although it will handle joysticks when a joystick interface becomes available.

The main screen of the game is taken up by an outer space scene featuring enemy ships, stars and (of course) your battleship. But the more unique aspect of this game is the "status panel" on the side, which includes a long-range scanner, a short-range scanner, and "accelerometer" showing how quickly you're changing speed, a rotation meter, a bar-chart to show the state of the ship's energy banks, a shield "mode-indicator" (whether they're on or off) and box to tell you which mission you're on. The game will cost you £9.95.

These are both traditional board games that sell as packages from Acornsoft (See Figure 2). The rules to both these age-old board games are briefly and competently explained in the documentation with the program package.

The board for each game is displayed on-screen as an eight by eight grid of checkered squares.

You can play Draughts at eight different levels of skill (Level 1 is the simplest level) and choose whether you or the computer goes first. The Reversi game offers the same choices (though skill levels goes up to nine, rather than eight).

Moves (unless you have a joystick interface) are entered from the keyboard with the row number followed by column number. So to move a piece from Row 5, Column 2 to Row 4, Column 3 you would enter the numbers 52 and then 43 - and then the program would automatically move the pieces around.

The program costs £9.95.

A traditional Apple program called Apple Panic was transferred to the BBC some time ago and has now been moved over to the Electron. (See Figure 3.)

You are placed in the rather nightmarish position of being stuck in a labyrinth of ladders and brickwork being chased by monsters that still look suspiciously like Apples with legs. In order to rid yourself of this threat to life and limb, you have to 'dig' holes in the brickwork and smash the monsters through the holes in order to eradicate them.

Monsters can also be hit by causing other monsters to fall on top of them from above. However, great care must be taken in digging your holes because if a monster falls in a half-filled whole, he can crawl out and get downright mean with you.

There are several levels of monster-meanness. The Red monster meanies have to be pushed through only one level to perish, the Green monsters must fall two levels and the infamous White must fall a full three levels before they bite the dust.

Another familiar arcade friend (asteroids) arrives for the Electron under the pseudonym of Meteors. (See Figure 4). You control a ship that starts life at the centre of the screen and must avoid the meteors hurtling about you by dodging and blasting them.

And if you find you don't have a means of blasting your way out of a meteor shower, there's always hyperspace - which randomly lands you in the middle of almost anywhere.

You have to clear all the meteors before going on to the next screen. You start with three ships, but can attain an extra one every time you get 1,000 points. The game costs £9.95.

Electron programs are currently only available on cassettes. But that's expected to change soon - with the planned introduction of disk drives and cartridge software for the machine.

Cartridge software will allow you to load software almost immediately by plugging a cartridge straight into the Electron. The software in a cartridge is embedded on a chip, which is activated the moment you turn your machine on and thus accessible must faster than slow-loading cassette programs.

Disk software will, of course, only be available when disk drives are ready for the Electron. If the disk system is anything like that produced for the BBC Micro it will run either 80-track or 40-track disk software.

Disks run much faster than cassettes.

The release of cartridges is predicted for late spring, with the disk interface probably not arriving until late summer or early autumn.