Logo has taken a further step towards popular acceptability with the general release of Atari Logo.

The language comes on a plug-in cartridge costing £60 and works with any Atari micro with a minimum of 16K of RAM. It is a full implementation of Logo including the powerful list processing features as well as the more well-known turtle graphics.

The Logo was written for Atari by Logo Computer Systems, which has taken full advantage of the colour graphics available on Atari micros.

Atari Logo can display 128 colours simultaneously and have up to four turtles on screen at any one time. Using the player/missile graphics (sprites) the turtles can take on user-defined shapes. Collision and animation are also supported, as is the use of four joysticks.

Atari wants to make the language attractive to schools by packaging it with the 600XL micro for an inclusive price of £175 plus VAT.

The cartridge comes with two comprehensive manuals - Introduction to Programming Through Turtle Graphics and Atari Logo Reference Manual.

The language is already in use in several schools where it appears to have won a favourable response. It is also on the final shortlist for the creative software category of the British microcomputer Awards, sponsored by PCN's publisher VNU Business publications.