1984 (Incentive)

The game proceeds along very sensible lines, informing of the next problem to be faced, and offering some prompts for beginners.

ABC (Artic)

Seems a little pricey for what it does, but it is a very easy program to use.

Alchemist (Imagine)

Excellent graphics and use of colour.

Android 2 (Vortex)

Good graphics, with lots of movement and good value for money.

Apple Jam (DK Tronics)

There's a fair use of colour and the character block graphics are smooth and fair in quality.

Battle 1917 (Cases)

Definitely a game for the strategy, wargamer freaks. I'm sure it has lots of scope for them.

The Birds And The Bees (Bug-Byte)

The game is a lot of fun to play, because of the graphics, and because the basic idea is quite original.

Bubble Trouble (Arcade)

Fun to play, reasonably addictive and very simple. Its single-mindedness is what makes it good to play - no concentration required! So it fits quite nicely as a pleasant interlude between other games.

Bull Tables (Lotus Soft)

Throughout all three programs the simple graphics are very entertaining and move nicely despite the program being written in BASIC.

Castle Blackstar (SCR Adventures)

A good text adventure beats a mixed graphics/text one any day, and Castle Blackstar ranks with Artic's best.

Chuckie Egg (A 'n F)

An excellent arcade game, with high addictivity built in.

Cruise Attack (Mikrogen)

It's a shame that they haven't allowed for more than one skill level, and I missed the enemy satellites, although they would have been hard to get without a joystick.

Dimension Destructors (Artic)

The control response is very good, one of the easiest "cockpit view" games to control I've ever seen.

Dodge City (Phoenix)

The action and adventure graphics are pretty good, but there's not much sound.

Doomsday Castle (Fantasy)

It's great fun, with good graphics and good sound. To offer any real criticism one would have to play for months! Excellent value.

Earth Defence (Artic)

All three levels are fast, the highest being virtually impossible without a great deal of practice.

Energy 30000 (ELM Computers)

Ever so fast, and requires hair trigger responses, which fortunately the keys provide, but the fingers don't always! Good value.

Krakatoa (Abbex)

It should keep players going for a long time, if only because it takes ages to become any good, and the scope for getting better scores each time you play is enormous with so many people to rescue.

Fighter Pilot (Digital Integration)

What works well is that the instruments respond very well with quite a lot of fine-tuning possible. I'm no pilot, but I reckon this is all very realistic.

Freez Bees (Silversoft)

If you're looking for a "Pengo" game, then this is a good and hard version.

French Is Fun (CDS)

The program contains a lot of quite attractive graphics, some with simple animation, and it will obviously be valuable for young French beginners as well as adult starters.

The Games Designer (Quicksilva)

Good value for money. The program is user-friendly so you don't have to be an expert in machine code programming to use it.

The Guardian (PSS)

A good, hard, fast game. If you want something simple to play but exceptionally fast, then this will probably go down well.

The House Of The Living Dead (Phipps)

I would think a good, tough game for younger age groups in preparation for alien-zapping.

The Humpty Dumpty Mystery (Widgit)

Describing the identity of the culprit In the second Humpty Dumpty game, is quite a skilful process, and surprisingly difficult to get right, even for adults!

Hunchback (Ocean)

This game will probably appeal to younger players as an intermediate stage between very simple games and the more complicated ones that are now appearing.

I'm In Shock (Artic)

The alien craft could have been a bit more energetically nasty, it would have made the game more interesting to play. Very difficult to control small movements of the laser base too.

Knockout (Mikrogen)

Of all sports simulations I've seen recently, I think this is the most appealing and a worthy addition to anyone's collection.

Laserwarp (Mikrogen)

Highly addictive and fun to play.

Magic Meanies (Cases)

At the slowest speed the game can become a bit repetitive, but at medium fast it is quite demanding.

Microbot (Softek)

A good and interesting game and highly original.

Mountains Of Ket (Incentive)

One to ponder over and come back to.

Mr. Wimpy (Ocean)

The graphics are nicely animated and very well drawn, which makes Mr. Wimpy fun to play. Added to that, I think they've got the levels of frustration about right to make it pretty addictive.

The Omega Run (CRL)

All the instruction screens dissolve one from another like in a film, and when it's all through you can then alter the conditions, like distance to target, numbers of enemy fighters and laser fields, and target run up.

Paintbox (Print 'n Plotter)

The program proves to be very foolproof in as much that if the permanent memory does get corrupted, there is still the Erase Memory as a backup facility, so you don't risk losing hours of work.

Paratroopers (Rabbit)

Fun, but perhaps not very addictive.

Pat The Postman (Mikrogen)

Pat The Postman is quite a good game for younger age groups, but will probably appeal to all. It soon becomes easy and this reduces its addictiveness.

Pathfinder (Widgit)

These games should prove very entertaining to play as well as providing a very real challenge.

Pi-Eyed (Automata)

The sort of game that appeals to Pi-maniacs as light relief between trying to win £6,000 or a trip to Hollywood.

Potty Painter (Rabbit)

A reasonable copy of what is now a fairly old arcade game - not bad, not wonderful either.

Punchy (Mr. Micro)

Perhaps it gets a bit repetitive after a while, but it's certainly amusing to play and the graphics combined with the speech make it almost worth the money alone.

The Pyramid (Fantasy)

The game is great fun to play, frustrating when you start to get down a few levels, die, and have to go back to the start. Very challenging!

Robot Riot (Silversoft)

A good use of colour and nice, smooth graphics combined with the continuous sound, make this into a good-average game.

Robot Runner (Longman)

Loading screens are very good, and the use of colour throughout is excellent.

Rommel's Revenge (Crystal Computing)

This is the best version of 'Battle Zone' with more objects like poles, radar towers and spouting volcanoes.

Scuba Dive (Durell)

This really shows what a bit of dedication can do in turning Spectrum graphics into something to be proud of.

Special Agent (Heinemann)

The graphics are very detailed and complex, but the game is fun to play, backed up by heavily illustrated book with background to spies in fact and fiction.

Speed Duel (DK Tronics)

There's quite a lot of good detail in this version, although I still think Road Racer is better.

Starclash (Micromega)

It's not easy to get through to the Mothership at all. I would say this is well above the usual galaxian/invader game standard, almost a scaled down version of the arcade original Altair. Quite good.

Stonkers (Imagine)

The simple controls help make this game very playable.

Supersnails (Games Machine)

This game has the most simple graphics I have ever seen - just white lines on a blue ground. It's simple but it is highly addictive.