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Since the advent of the Trivial Pursuit quiz game, dining rooms have been buzzing until the early hours of the morning with questions and answers on a variety of general knowledge topics.

As parents and children recreate long-forgotten family events, even the trusty TV faded into the background and the ever popular home micro began to feel somewhat neglected.

But fear not, help is at hand for you micro addicts who suffer withdrawal symptoms from even one night's absence from your box of bytes.

Suncom has released a computer version of this popular family general knowledge game in the form of Party Quiz. You can liken it to the video game seen currently in many public houses.

You are provided with four neat and well built quick response hand controllers so that the game can be played without using the keyboard.

All the controllers plug into one interface box with in turn connects to both joystick ports. There are four buttons on the controllers and they correspond to the numbered answers that appear on the screen.

There are two types of questions: a multiple choice, which displays four possible answers with only one correct, and a straightforward true/false variety requiring the use of only two of the four buttons.

Two discs contain all the questions, with the Atari version on side A. These questions are pure general knowledge with no specialist subjects, as in the table top game.

Once the game is loaded, pressing Option displays a menu screen. From here you can alter the game format by selecting the number of players, the response time for each quiz, the number of rounds, type of game and whether any of the four players is to be handicapped or not.

The response time can be set to ten seconds, five seconds or a challenging three seconds and a visible countdown bar in the main game reduces in length at a speed relative to this response time as you attempt an answer.

You can have up to 20 rounds, with each round containing ten questions.

There are also lightning bonus rounds where the computer randomly selects a player who is given twenty seconds to answer up to ten questions. It then picks another player until all have had a crack at the bonus round.

The type of game can be altered between competitive and social. In the former only the first correct answer scores, whereas in the latter all players may attempt an answer, with all correct answers scoring.

Handicapping any player from the main menu screen immediately reduces his response time by half. His controller is automatically rendered inactive until half the response time has elapsed.

The computer automatically takes care of the scoring and at the end of the game all the players are rated according to their performance.

The game is obviously meant for the American market, as the questions generally orientate around American culture, history and general knowledge.

For example the question "The area code for Las Vagas?" would probably leave even the most experienced Mastermind addict clueless.

There are no graphics in this game, and the little use made of sound is restricted to highlighting the decreasing countdown bar, but this does add somewhat to the tension when you are deep in thought.

The idea of four separate controllers is great and makes for quick responses, but this game has been introduced too late, as Trivia fever has already begun to dwindle.

It's a worthy effort, but not for me. The general knowledge addicts among you may quite enjoy it, but it's rather expensive for what you get - and you are going to have to brush up an awful lot on America.