Wargaming using microcomputers has become one of the growth areas in the software market this past twelve months, but aside from the commercial products, users have been rather left to their own devices. This book goes a long way towards remedying that.

Although specifically for the Commodore 64, it includes notes for conversion to the Pet series and, since all of the programs use the bare essentials of Basic, it is a simple task to translate the programs to other machines.

Mr. Walwyn is obviously an experienced and enthusiastic wargamer and no mean programmer. The book is well presented and covers the games and programming side of the subject equally well. There are six games listings here covering an ancient strategy game, Waterloo, a naval battle, a World War I dogfight (including the chance to design your own places) and a simple flight simulation in which you must bomb a warship.

The graphics are confined to the Commodore character set but they are imaginatively used. Adding user-defined graphics and sprites should be a simple exercise. The listings are all dumps to the printer and there are plenty of mid-game screen dumps so you can see what to expect.

The only criticism I can made is that five of the games require two players. Having to trade places at the keyboard is not the ideal way to play and I suspect that many users would prefer to take on the computer. Perhaps Mr. Walwyn could be induced to write a follow-up along these lines.

Other than that, it should fill a need for wargaming micro owners and serve as an excellent and inexpensive introduction to the genre for non-enthusiasts.

Peter Worlock