A bit of a cheat on two counts, this. First, it contains little - if any - new material. The bulk of it is culled from previous Granada titles on the C64.

The second naughty aspect is in the title. Although it makes a reasonable effort to be "complete", no book on the C64 can make that claim without a thorough guide to machine code, which this one lacks.

There is a section on assembler but it is nothing more than a cursory look at the subject and you'll find no mention of things like interrupt-driven graphics.

Some of it is very good, particularly Steve Money's section on graphics and sound.

To round things off there's a collection of programs but the emphasis is on games. A better bet would have been a collection of utilities like sprite and graphic designers, and a machine code monitor.

At the price, the book is good value, but there's still room for a real 'complete' guide to this powerful machine.

Peter Worlock