Barbarian (Palace)

It's a thrill to play the game: the action is furious and addictive.

Triaxos (39 Steps/Ariolasoft)

Some nice sprites and explosions... Requires lots of thought and planning.

Mag Max (Imagine)

Fast, colourful and addictive as all shoot-'em-ups should be.

Stormbringer (Mastertronic)

The final "Magic Knight" game is not a letdown: the graphics are still highly detailed (though still lack colour), the innovative window system remains, but the task is much harder. Guaranteed satisfaction for months.

The Final Matrix (Gremlin)

A nice idea for a puzzle-arcade game, and it's quite well carried off... Will certainly present an excellent long-term challenge.

Enterprise (Melbourne House)

I found it all got quickly repetitive and lacked anything to get your adrenalin going.

Chronos (Mastertronic)

I'm completely fed up with games that don't use the CPC's colour facilities; this one's plain ridiculous.

Nemesis The Warlock (Martech)

Not all it could have been, but still not a bad challenge.

Ball Crazy (Mastertronic)

The sort of game you can play for hours and keep coming back to.

Thing Bounces Back (Gremlin)

It's so easy to play and get hooked on, but completing it will be no easy task.

World Games (US Gold)

A Decathlon-type game with very nice animation in places.

Strike (Mastertronic)

Bowling is limited in its variety and the pin pickup routine gets immensely tedious.

Galletron (Mastertronic)

Howard The Duck (Activision)

I haven't seen the film, and on this showing I'm rather glad. There's some nice ideas here but they don't translate into decent gameplay.

Cosmic Shock-Absorber (Martech)

Looks to have suffered badly in conversion. The task, which involves a lot of alien-zapping, tends to get repetitive and our version had a bug which frequently crashed the game.

Gunstar (Firebird)

The graphics are excellent and sound-effects bearable. Unfortunately, it's let down by one major design flaw: say you reach stage 3 and die, you go back to stage 1. So frustrating.

Black Fountain/Sharpe's Deeds (Incentive)

The pics are tidy, colourful, but repetitive, the response times occasionally a little slow, and the text well-written but necessarily rather brief.

Mountains Of Ket/Top Secret (Incentive)

A word of warning - think twice before knocking off any of the villagers, as their companions turn a wee bit savage when they see what you've done.

Dungeons, Amethysts, Alchemists 'N Everythin' (Atlantis)

Shows a refreshingly relaxed approach to satire and sex... For £1.99 you just can't lose.