Crusoe for the Spectrum is an unusual adventure as it displays the figure of Crusoe on his island, amid fruit trees, cacti and dangerous beasts. You direct the castaway's moves and tell him to eat, drink and so on, while details of this lonely heart's life status, including vigour, thirst and hunger fill the rest of the screen. Colourful and fun at first, the slow keyboard response, the tiny map and the figure's lethargic progress make the game's success less than certain.

Factory Breakout is a three screen arcade-style game, with five selectable levels of difficulty featuring Zirky the robot. The program is really a series of loosely linked games, each quite well done, but still lacking in star appeal.

The excellent Choc A Bloc Charlie on the Commodore 64 is a sort of Pengi, but the graphics, sound and difficulty make it one of the best versions we've ever seen. The program loads quickly with Pavloda and Charlie starts in the middle of a rectangle of blocks. The aim is to shunt the four purple blocks together to create a time door through which he can escape. Charlie can hurl grenades to move blocks, which rapidly expends his energy. A major problem is each purple block is the only barrier between him and the four guardians, so strategy is essential. There are 16 levels, but the game's so tricky that getting past the first level before Charlie's time or energy run out is nigh on impossible. Nice one.

Commodore hasn't forgotten its Vic 20 following and has added two new games for the unexpanded Vic, and another for the Vic with 16K expansion to its range. Rapier Punch puts you in a gloomy room searching for a hidden treasure chest. Only your immediate surroundings are lit. You must be a fast-mover as there's a timer, and spinning crosses, dragons and their eggs to hamper your murky progress by ending one of your three precious lives.

Starbase has a Defender-type background, and you move a cursor over alien ships to prevent them stealing scientists. We've seen better games than these on the unexpanded Vic.

In Bomber Mission you take the hot seat of a World War II fighter bomber in this part-simulator, part-strategy game. You must select targets in the time available, shooting down enemy fighters as you go.

Now The Evil Dead is finally here, it's a disappointment. There are no instructions, so unless you've seen the film you only know you're supposed ultimately to throw a book you find on the fire. The location is a series of rooms seen from above, and moving to the edge scrolls the screen left or right, not that there's much to the house. Weapons such as axes, swords and what look like baseball bats have different effects on the creatures you encounter, which include disembodied legs and hands, green demons, zombies and the like. The graphics are simple, the sound's fair, but the game lacks the excitement promised by the advertising.

Graphs are popular this week, and R&P's Instant Graph Plotter for the Dragon looks good. The 27-page manual details how to use the package with many examples. You can specify up to 25 data points and a number of useful routines such as area under curve, tangents and calculation of averages are included.

Data Plot on the Spectrum is far simpler, but offers the display options of graph or tabular format with automatic scaling. This one comes with sample data sets to let you see how the program can be used, but there's precious little documentation.

Random Access Mailing on the BBC is a sort of database system for bulk-mailing applications. It's a dedicated system which prompts you for entries against headings like address, telephone number and contact, and has facilities for using some Wordwise commands. Data can be sorted, searches performed, labels printed and so on. Micro Aid can also provide suitable stationery such as labels and letter-headed fanfold.