A new range of budget-priced disc games has been launched by R. & A. J. Preston. The games are not new ones but this is the first time they have been available on disc at the low price of £4.99. Two game discs are reviewed here: the first is a compilation of three games: Ruby Robba, Perilous Pit and Desperado Dan.

An initial menu is displayed after BOOTing the DragonDOS disc. From this you can choose to play any one of three games. It's not possible to go back to this menu; to change games requires powering off.

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Ruby Robba is a curious mixture of the Connect 5 and Sliding Square puzzles. Using either keyboard or joystick, you control a pointer which moves around the edge of a 10 x 10 grid of blue blocks. These blocks are either blank, or contain snakes or guards or a mystery bonus of between 100 and 300 points. The ruby is shown as a red block. Within the black squares are mines which can be used to kill the snakes and guards for extra points.

The blocks can be moved bi-directionally using the fire button or space bar. The object of the game is to push the square containing the ruby into a 'trap' at the top left of the screen. This is made more difficult than it sounds by the snakes and guards, which will return the ruby to the bottom right of the screen if they get near it.

Although this initially seems quite an original game, the challenge can fade - there isn't really enough variety in the total of 15 difficulty levels. The object of the game is simple to grasp, but to capture the ruby requires some logical thinking - hence this game is ideal for the younger player.

Desperado Dan is a familiar platforms and ladders type game - guide the little figure down the screen avoiding the flying bits, ducking the falling bits and jumping the stationary bits. Desperado Dan is not one of the classics of its genre.

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Perilous Pit is a simplified version of Donkey Kong. The slight difference is that diamonds must be collected one at a time and taken to the truck at the top of the screen. Three diamonds are needed to move onto the next screen and there are four screens in all. An 'Orbis' appears on each screen (It looks like an old-style radio to me!) which slowly homes in on you once you start jumping. Moving platforms and other nasties must be negotiated.

The mode 3 graphics are fairly well-defined, but do tend to get rather flickery at times (Is this game machine code or just compiled Basic, I wonder?). If you specifically want a version of Donkey Kong then stick to Microdeal's offering. As a third on this budget disc, Perilous Pit is a nice clone.

None of the games on this disc are exactly going to set the world on fire. However, as a set of three, and at a price of £4.99 they can be recommended to the gamesters who can't wait for tapes to load.

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The second disc I looked at contains just one game; Kung Fu: The Master. Again, this is loading by BOOTing the DragonDOS disc. The object of the game is to rescue your girlfriend (Isn't it always?) who is, for some unexplained reason, being held captive. To do this you must get past screen after screen of 'trainees' (who look just like you!), knifemen, snakes, bombs and fire-breathing dragons. The joystick is used to do all the usual kung-fu stuff like run, jump, duck, foot sweep and various types of kick - all nice and violent! Points seem to be scored for hitting just about everything in sight.

The mode 3 graphics are quite well-animated and flicker-free with some nice horizontal scrolling included. The baddies are also nicely defined.

This is probably one of the better kung-fu games around for the Dragon at the moment.