Carling The Spider is a brand spanking new piece of entertainment software for Commodore's first colour computer, the VIC-20, created by Joe 'Polygon' Dixon coming in the form of a traditional 2D platform game. Once loaded, you're tasked with guiding our eight-legged hero, Carling, around the caverns to recover all the diamonds therein. Things are never easy for the little spider, though, as there are lethal hazards that he must avoid, such as evil ball-bearings and sharp spikes (some of which actually look more like mushrooms). Once you've successfully collected all of the diamonds, there's an exit to the next screen, but no time limit to worry about.

From the second level, there are platforms which help Carling jump higher than usual, with the ability to climb walls left out. Perhaps the caverns are made of reinforced acrylic, just like most baths? No explanation is given, or required to be honest, because this is good, old-fashioned gaming fun. The graphics are simple but well animated, and the sound effects, while being slightly generic, are more than functional. The title screen has a short, repetitive and bouncy musical score, though memory limitations have obviously stopped anything further in the presentation department, which is just as well, since most of the VIC's 5KB of RAM has been put to making the game as big and as challenging as possible. There is something about the way that the screens are drawn that takes me back to classics like Bonzo. Although the software sprites move about smoothly and flawlessly, building up each cavern looks as though it's done in a short BASIC routine. Perhaps this is intentional.

Though Psytronik's debut VIC-20 title may not be the very best ever released for the machine, nor the most technically impressive, there's enough to keep most retro gamers entertained. There's# only a very slight issue with the collision detection (when landing near to spikes), but like most platform games of this type, the safest and easiest routes can be quickly learnt. Keep an eye on www.psytronik.com for further details on this simple and enjoyable game.

A simple, fun and challenging game for all ages.

The prolific Andre Baune is back with his latest release for the 16k Sinclair ZX81. In his game Cannon War, you must defend your border from bombardment by the enemy cannons, scoring one point for each cannonball destroyed and ten for taking out each of the opposing cannon.

This is one of over two dozen games by Andre available for the monochrome beast, and can be downloaded from www.zx-team.de/andre, and if you don't have the ways and means to run this on the real hardware, check out www.zx81.de for links to emulators and other essential information.