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US Gold are in there as you would expect with a quiz game of their own and a very good one it is too.

This was potentially the best of the trio and had it not been for the annoying Americanisms I would have given this the top spot.

It has by far the best thought-out play mechanism. Up to four players or teams can take part with multiple choice questions, type in the correct answer questions, and complete this sentence-style questions. Add to this a question time for extra bonus points and you have a game that you very quickly get hooked on.

You can always choose the type of question you wish to answer as well so that depending on how adventurous you are feeling you gamble to score more points by choosing the most difficult option. Typing in an answer will earn you more points than choosing between options.

There are six different categories Science & Nature, History & Geography, TV Film Sports & Games, Culture and the Grab Bag.

Question categories are selected by throwing the C64 dice. To do this you hold down the space bar whilst the numbers 1 to 6 flash up on screen - when you release the space a number is selected.

Should you throw a six you are given a question from the "Grab Bag" - this is a randomly selected question that can earn you extra points and give you a free go.

I enjoyed the questions. They were interesting - some fairly obscure which made it even more entertaining. The problem with them was the heavy American influence. I didn't mind the questions about basketball and the NFL so much. After all if you can't reel off the names of a few American professional jocks then it's fairly difficult to appear hip these days - to say nothing of being able to get anything out of the dozens of American sports games that are coming out on the C64 now.

The questions that really threw me were the obscure chapters of American history and TV programmes that I'd never heard of (I suppose it's only a matter of time though).

Another problem was the differences in spelling and names of certain things. For example I got one question which asked "What game features a rope and a dagger?" to which I replied Cluedo, thinking I was pretty smart. Trouble was, the omputer comes back with "Incorrect", the correct answer is "Clue". Presumably that's what the game is called in the States.

On the subject of spelling, Mind Pursuit does have one very neat feature - it lets you spell things incorrectly and will still give you a "correct" if what you typed in was recognisable.

The game reads off the disk a lot of the time enabling it to store far more questions than the other games and so reducing the problem of getting to know the answers off by heart.

It also uses the storage to include some pictorial questions - though I will say that after several hours of play I didn't get one to appear.

So far the game is only available on disk. I would recommend that if you do have a disk drive, you opt for this one. The extra storage capacity of the disk drive makes games of this type incomparably better than their cassette counterparts. It is a thoroughly enjoyable game to play by yourself or with a friend and you get used to Americanisms after a while. [A sort of numbing effect? - Ed]