BENEATH the legendary palace of Mycenae, where Agamemnon the conqueror of Troy was horribly murdered by his wife Clytaemnestra, are vast labyrinths. Gates lead from one multi-tiered section to the next.

In Gift from the Gods you are cast as Orestes, son of the dead king. Your task is to collect certain geometric shapes from rooms within the maze and place some of them in their correct arrangement inside the chamber of the Guardian. Only then is escape possible.

Your sister Electra will help you if you can locate her, whilst the shade of Clytaemnestra will attempt to destroy you by reducing your stamina.

The graphics are well made and the figure of Orestes walks and flies realistically. Technically an excellent production, but it does seem rather short on events. You can wander around the maze for quite a time with little happening to provide interest.

Gift from the Gods is a curate's egg really: long in technical merit, short on excitement.

Richard Price

ARE YOU lying comfortably? A little sand in your eyes and across the border of sleep you go.

The Sandman Cometh takes you into the shifting regions of the unconscious. Freud, Lewis Carroll and Herman Hesse are thrown together with liberal helpings of humour and fantasy to offer you a journey in search of the Hourglass of Infinity. Ghost trains, spies, gunslingers and perplexing puzzles await you in the palace of dreams.

The game is a standard text adventure with unobtrusive location graphics. Unusually, you are provided with the full vocabulary of the game if you care to ask for it. There are two 48K games on the cassette but you must obtain your 'ticket number' from the first to get into the second.

The adventure is attractively presented and the difficulty of the tasks and problems is progressive, so much so that you will soon find your head swimming. The concept is imaginative and allows the game to contain a number of different settings. Each is self-contained but you will need items from one scenario to help you in another.

Richard Price

GET YOUR O Level chemistry text-books out if you have the slightest intention of buying and playing Espionage.

The posh packaging may well lead you to think that you are getting some kind of fancy spy adventure set in the cut-throat world of JR. No way.

The program is a set of tests about oil and its chemistry and, unless you are interested in hydrocarbons in a really heavy way, you'll soon find yourself swimming around in a big greasy mental pool of ethane, ethene, butene, butane, gasp, help.

You may deduce from errors in the information the identity of the mole in the company for which you are working. If petrochemicals are a closed book to you, this might be rather difficult.

Espionage is either mutton dressed up as lamb or homework masquerading as good clean fun.

The presentation is dull, the content dry and specialised and both the introductory and main programs failed to autorun. It may be useful if you want to be chairman of BP but if you just want a good time steer clear. Must rush off, my catalytic cracker's boiling.

Richard Price

AT CHECKPOINT Charlie only the swirling mists of the sub-Le Carré spy thriller show any signs of life. Checkpoint Charlie is the crossover point from West to East Berlin. It is also the starting point for Assignment East Berlin from Sterling Software.

Your job is to bring back the plans for LOBOT, a brain-numbingly important radio transmitter, and you are to achieve your patriotic objective in the conventional North-South-Get-Rope-You-Are-Dead style of text adventures.

Unfortunately many of the conventional commands such as Inventory or Take are not supported, and consequently fiddling around trying to discover the correct words takes even longer than usual. Although the game is atmospheric, some of the detail is sloppy - what, for example, is a Russian guard doing manning an East German border post?

There is also a tendency to make problems unrealistic; the 'small book' turns out to be your passport, something you would know perfectly well in real life. Such tricks spoil the illusion of involvement in an adventure.

Unattractively presented on-screen, and slow to respond, the game is less good than it should be. The story is not at all bad, and the ever-present threat of capture adds to the tension. It makes no sense therefore to spoil things by lumbering the user with a poor vocabulary and slow interpreter.

Chris Bourne

SKOOLDAZE explodes into the imagination with a cloud of chalk dust and a hail of catapult bullets. It is one of those rare games where nothing over-ambitious is attempted in the way of programming but all the elements unite to provide an addictive and satisfying romp.

The screen displays a school, with classrooms spread over three floors. The playing area is not large, being about three screensful of scrolling school, but the careful planning of the game allows for plenty of action.

You are Eric, a Bad Boy whose dreadful school report is locked in the headmaster's safe. The task is to get it out. Only the masters know the combination of the safe and to make them reveal it you must set all the school shields flashing by hitting them with your catapult. A nice refinement is that Mr Creak the History Master is a doddering fellow who cannot remember his part of the combination and must be forced to reveal it by writing his date of birth on his blackboard.

In between performing the quest, you must take part in the normal activities of the school - that is, playing and attending lessons. Instructions appear at the bottom of the screen and if you are caught in the wrong place by a master you will receive lines. 10,000 lines and you are sent home, and have to start again.

The characters of the game have a cartoon-style quality and represent school stereotypes - the trendy master, the bully, the tearaway and the swot. You can change the names to those of your choice which should make the game even more fun.

Whether or not you want to attempt the extremely difficult problem of cracking the headmaster's safe, Skooldaze is tremendously enjoyable. You can have a great time simply trying to survive, as masters dole out lines with hideous abandon and, sometimes, quite unfairly. You can have catapult fights with other boys, and if you manage to fool a master into giving the bully or swot some lines then you lose some from your own tally.

They may not be the happiest days of your fife, but Skooldaze should provide some of the happiest hours of the day.

Chris Bourne

Talk about Alice Through the Looking Glass! Macman's Magic Mirror is an exploration of the world of mirror reflections, not only the relatively simple vertical mirror but also horizontal, a combination of both and diagonal.

The first problem presented is to match up pegs on the mirror screen moving Macman around to place them. There is a time limit, but using a joystick speeds up the action. When the pegs have been matched the next task is to reproduce a simple jigsaw and then comes the really fiendish problem of repeating a mirror image of patterned blocks. The puzzle requires careful observation, not only to recognise the pattern but also to reverse the blocks to their mirror image. It can be very tricky indeed especially using the horizontal/vertical mirror.

MacMan's Magic Mirror provides plenty of practice in the all important skills of visual discrimination and observation of patterns in an entertaining and original way. The stated target age is four to eight but four year olds might find it rather difficult, and six to 10 is probably more appropriate.

Theo Wood

THE CROWD rises to its feet, screaming and cheering in frenzied excitement as two international teams are heralded onto the pitch by that well known tune from Match of the Day.

The scene is set for the cup final in Match Day from Ocean - the crowd falls silent as the teams prepare themselves. The whistle blows.

The Tooting Tigers fight desperately for supremacy, but they are out of their league. The Camden Crawlers start to win, scoring goal after goal. Ten-nil to the Crawlers at half time. The Tigers seem to have lost their claws and retreat desolated to the changing rooms.

Match Day is viewed from the eye of the camera with the pitch scrolling from left to right. Although movement is slow there is a lot of detail in the program - your player can dribble, kick, head and throw the ball. The game includes corners and is as realistic as possible on the Spectrum.

As well as playing against the computer you can opt for a club match where as many as eight players can take part, each team playing the other through to the finals.

There is an extensive menu through which various game details can be altered - even to changing the team's name and colours.

You can control only one player at a time. He is always nearest the ball, identified when his socks turn the same colour as his strip. This places you at a disadvantage when playing the computer as the opposing team work as one to get control of the ball.

There is no sound other than the introductory tune. Strangled bleeps and squeaks filter from the computer at intervals throughout the game and sound more like a happy budgie than the grunts of the players.

It would be impossible to capture the atmosphere of football on a computer, but Match Day is a worthwhile attempt at reproducing a live game. If you are a football fanatic, you should enjoy this one.

Clare Edgeley

THE SPIRITS of Christmas just passed may not have had the pleasure of the spectres from Ghostbusters in December due to a late release. The ghouls have, however, finally arrived and the results of programmer David Crane's hard work are likely to pay off as it is tipped for the bestseller charts.

The game has three phases each of which includes travelling around a city capturing ghosts with the equipment bought by you with a bank loan at the start of the game.

You can also select your mode of transport, which can be anything from a compact or 1963 hearse to a high performance car which costs $15,000. As you travel around the city map ghosts will float onto the screen and possess buildings which turn red when inhabited. Your aim is get into those buildings to catch the ghosts while running over and immobilising any spectres which you might find on the way.

When you arrive at the distressed building you must drop your trap and coax the itinerant ghoulie into the path of a mechanical arm which takes a grab at it.

At any point a Marshmallow Alert may sound and you will have to press the 'B' key to trap the mallow before it marshes all over the buildings. If he escapes from your trap then the city and your score will suffer.

Scaring, sorry, scoring, is achieved in two ways. You will gain $100 for every ghost that you catch. If you attract a Marshmallowman, however, the mayor of the city will give you $2000 for your trouble.

The game draws to its conclusion when the ultimate baddies arrive at the Temple of Zuul at the centre of the screen. If you have enough dollars you can take part in the final conflict, perhaps win the game, and gain access to a secret pass number which will give you access to any other Ghostbusters game in the universe.

The game is not much to shout about but cannot be damned just because it emulates the plot of a film and contains nothing new. One of the more interesting features of the game is the soundtrack, coupled with a nifty voice synthesiser which insists on shouting 'Ghostbusters' and 'Behind you' in a passable imitation of Ray Parker Junior's strangled wheeze.

John Gilbert

THE TWO parts of Arrow of Death, each sold separately, form the sequel to the tale of the Golden Baton. This magic object, which once brought luck to the heroic world it presides over, has now become tainted by the evil of the sorcerer Xerdon. Crops wither, the land is sick, the people murmur.

In Part One you must gird your loins and head up country to seek out the pieces of an arrow - the only weapon which will destroy the magician provided it is made of the correct materials. You begin your journey in the deserted palace where the baton throbs with malevolence and despair.

The second program is a game in its own right and needs no data from the first. In this part you have found the pieces and must now take them to the only fletcher who can make the Arrow in the correct, magical, way. He has unfortunately already been captured by the agents of the evil one, so don't expect it to be easy.

The games have similar styles and feature graphics for many locations. You can switch between the text description and the picture by using the ENTER key - though the instructions don't tell you that, which may confuse the unwary.

Richard Price

EVIL rules the land - yawn - and only a hero can bring home the bacon by finding the Three Great Artefacts of Power and returning them to their rightful owners. In Se-kaa of Assiah you become the hero of the title - geddit? - and begin your quest in a village close to the dread castle of the Dark Ones. Enter at your peril and brave the forces of darkness.

The program is a two-part game which purports to be a text adventure with graphics. After a short foray into the fortress you will soon realise that there is precious little description or supporting text beyond your own input. The inevitable result is a featureless and empty world which fails to grasp the imagination successfully. The graphics are interesting but do not add enough to the very slim story line to hold your attention for very long.

In some ways the game might have been more likely to succeed if the programmers had decided to make it into either a graphic monster maze type game or a pure text adventure. The concentration on slick pictures has clearly reduced the power of the interpreter and the space available for words.

Although the program is cheap adventurers still have the right to expect more than this for their money.

Richard Price

A DANCE and health studio based in Walsall has come up with a get-fit program aimed at computer sloths. Microfitness is geared to get your corpuscles moving, the program first gives you a few simple exercises to perform and then tells you how unfit you are.

Before the program can gauge your fitness level it asks you a series of detailed questions about your body's dimensions including how much extra fat you are carrying and your resting heart rate.

You then start to get physical and are given a series of simple exercises to perform. The data from these helps the computer to predict accurately your anaerobic power, muscle power and flexibility, amongst others.

A detailed booklet comes with the package giving diagrams and explanations on each exercise. To relieve the tedium of the computer screen, a line drawing of a man performing each exercise shows how it should be done. Should you find certain exercises difficult you are told in no uncertain terms to consult your doctor before continuing with the assessment.

Once your physical state has been decided, you can choose from among 54 sporting activities, those on which to base your training schedule. Those include running, jogging, windsurfing, skiing and also less strenuous sports like golf and snooker. It is difficult to imagine anyone getting fit playing snooker - unless that is, they keep well away from the beer. Having chosen your sports, you are given a strict training program designed to push you, with points being awarded at the end of each session according to how well you have done.

Microfitness has been well documented and all computations are based on the national norm. For those who are fitness freaks this program is a godsend - for those who are not, it might be a good idea to try it - you never know, you might end up attempting a marathon.

Clare Edgeley

OIL STRIKE is a strategy game for eight to fourteen year-olds based on the oil industry search for new resources.

The action takes place on a screen grid and the object of the game is to search likely squares for supplies of oil. A player can choose to survey a square which will show the geological strata beneath and, if the survey is favourable, drilling can take place.

Drilling is not always successful as a survey may show conditions likely to produce oil, whereas in fact water is the end result. On the first two concessions squares are numbered as to their potential for oil bearing, but after that players have only the strata to guide them.

Once found the oil gushes and a production level can be set. As the months pass messages scroll up on the screen, such as 'Oil price drops', and it will be time for the budding oil magnate to reduce production.

Other messages include money spent on cleaning up the environment after an oil spill or a well has dried up. Scoring is in the form of a bank balance and a monthly totalling of income and expenditure.

Oil Strike is a valuable introduction to the interactive forces of the world commodities market and the language of the business world, as well as an exploration of geological maps. Its appeal lies in the strategic decision making which has to be revised continuously as world market conditions change, a heinously difficult task.

Theo Wood

BUY the rights to a well-known TV series. Find an old game knocking around which bears a passing resemblance to the scenario. Hey presto! another spin-off is born.

In Airwolf you are the pilot of the eponymous helicopter which you fly through a series of scrolled scenes.

Two-thirds of the screen contains scrubs and mountains and the middle third, through which Airwolf travels, looks like a long black tunnel.

The inlay card informs you that Airwolf must rescue five scientists, who are being held in a base somewhere beneath the Arizona desert. You are not told why or by whom.

Viewers of the television series will already be familiar with Airwolf. The plot rotates around a slick and sophisticated helicopter which fights the baddies.

Sadly though, the arcade game is a poor substitute. The graphics are dull and the tasks uninspired. The first obstacle, a wall, appears as Airwolf shoots through the 'tunnel'. While busy destroying the wall with full firing power it starts rebuilding itself.

If you succeed in demolishing that wall the next obstacle which comes into view is - yes, you guessed - a very familiar looking wall. Very imaginative.

Although there is the option for keyboard or joystick control the latter is well advised as all five keys would require simultaneous operation. The game bears a resemblance to Blue Thunder and is produced by the same company. This sheep in Airwolf's clothing is best avoided.

Colette McDermott

DISEASE DODGERS is one of those programs which are much more fun than the program notes suggest. We are told that the game will show how health, diet and exercise are inter-related. It is based on this quite complex idea. You have to move the Dodger family over a series of jumps, eating food and drinking as you go along. The terrain varies and gets more awkward depending on which region of the world you are in.

The family consists of Dad, Mum, Gran, teenager and toddler. Invariably Dad has the best chance of survival, a dubious position to hold. As the dodger moves about the terrain he or she has to jump over obstacles and, if no food is eaten, gets progressively weaker. All the time various coloured blobs representing diseases attack your dodger.

The aim of the game is to build up immunity by eating the healthy foods on offer. Weight, immunity levels and survival scores are shown at the top of the screen.

Unusually for an educational game this has true arcade action. The dodgers have to take running jumps over the walls and not simply hop over them, which all adds to the motivation factor. The big problem with the game is with the graphics. Some of the foods are difficult to distinguish; for instance was that purple shape a dyed egg or an aubergine?

Despite the colour problems Disease Dodgers is fun to play and demonstrates the relationships stated if only on an elementary level. Certainly it is to be recommended as an alternative to the average arcade game for children between eight and 12.

Theo Wood

In space nobody can hear you scream which is just as well if you intend buying The Great Space Race. It is one of the most vacuous products we have seen and it's time that this sci-fi 'epic' was exposed as yet another dose of Legend super-hype.

The loose plot involves a race between space ships, some piloted by user-controlled characters and others by the computer, to deliver consignments of an alcoholic beverage called Natof to as many planets as possible. During the delivery runs characters may indulge in ship-to-ship laser gun butchery or lift the lid on the cargo and arrive at the next port of call in a drunken haze.

At seemingly random times during the game one of the characters may discover the code number of a booby trap bomb which has been hidden on a planet or ship. If you have time to scribble the number and location down before the information is scrolled off the screen you can defuse the bomb in the unlikely event of arriving at the location.

If the game loads without crashing back into Basic you will immediately see the most attractive aspect of the package. The graphics in which the characters are displayed are in brilliant high resolution which is produced on the screen with the utmost professionalism.

It is, however, a pity that the programmers at Legend do not seem to be able to produce a good animated representation of a space battle. The two ships on the screen look like two mis-shaped fried eggs sliding around in a pan. Legend has taken minimal graphics to new heights.

As for playability, if you want to make a cup of tea or 'phone a distant relative in Australia you can leave the game to play with itself. As with soaps such as Coronation Street or The Archers you can go away and come back without having missed much.

It is incredible that the company which produced Valhalla with interactive characters and real-time action, difficult to program by any standards, could produce such a whimper after the bang. The Great Space Race includes real-time action but if intelligent character interaction does exist within the game it must be hiding somewhere. As for the Natof, the game plays as if it was written under the influence of the stuff.

John Gilbert

GRAND PRIX MANAGER heralds the return of the Toms, following a long silence after the incredibly successful Football Manager. Not that author Kevin Toms has written the sequel, Grand Prix Manager, but the game has been published by his company and is firmly based on the blend of menu-based decisions and highlights of the action which made the previous game a Spectrum classic.

Unfortunately, the simulation of life as manager of a Formula One team is far less impressive.

You must choose a driver from a short list while keeping in close contact with the sponsors. Decisions regarding the race depend on the percentage of straights and bends, weather conditions and temperature. You can decide on your tyres, their hardness and tread depth, and set the elevation of the car's spoiler.

Then you sit back and watch user-defined graphics stay motionless in the centre of the screen while other user-defined graphics whizz past them.

Written in Basic with occasional POKEs of the crazy border variety, it is a dud effort if ever there was one.

Chris Bourne

DANGER MOUSE is back, fighting fit and once again ready to pit his wits against the mad Baron Silas Greenback in the Black Forest Gateau. Whoops! Chateau.

Colonel K, head of a department so secret that even he does not know its name, has sent his right-hand mouse with trusted assistant Penfold to the Black Forest to destroy the Baron's secret weapon - a Pi-beam, which poses a threat to world security. 'It should be a piece of cake', mutters Danger Mouse as they leave for Germany in the mousemobile.

Many strange adventures follow in the quest for the Pi-Beam, more than once the intrepid pair find themselves in the soup as time after time they fall into the fiendish traps set by the mad Baron.

Their immediate problem is finding a way into the chateau, preferably in one piece, and with a little ingenuity and lots of luck they start to make headway.

Danger Mouse in the Black Forest Chateau is an adventure game played in a multiple choice format with a number of options to choose from at every move. Your success is dependent upon learning the area and picking up the right objects and you might find it helpful to draw a map of your progress.

Nearly all the objects have some uses although you might find a few red herrings. Penfold plays his part and lets fall cryptic clues at almost every opportunity. Pay close attention to the dialogue - there is nearly always something there to help you.

The game is played in two parts, and you will have to solve the first half to gain the skeleton's secret bone number - this is a code allowing you to load part two.

Charming illustrations accompany each location. The game is fast moving with no long delays before arrival at new locations and the adventure is easy to solve. The simplicity of the game makes it ideal for young adventurers and an enjoyable break for those seasoned adventurers not wishing to expend much brain power.

Clare Edgeley

PROBABLY the most disturbing simulation ever written has been re-released in a new improved form by Hewson Consultants. Heathrow International Air Traffic Control is guaranteed to dispel any idea you might have had that airports are safe places to be in.

The original program was a classic of simulation, and with the addition of Concorde flights, and a completely different version for Schiphol airport in Holland thrown in on the B side of the cassette, the new product is even more impressive.

The screen displays a radar map of the area around the airport. Aeroplanes enter the screen at any one of four stacks, points where pilots are instructed to circle until the controller brings them in to land.

It sounds easy, but it is not. The idea is to get everything moving in an orderly flow, but you only have to make one mistake to start a chain reaction leaving bits of broken aircraft strewn all over West London or the Zuider Zee. Although the program is slow, being conducted in real time, and tests you over half an hour of activity, once something starts to happen you will find it very difficult to work out the instructions for each individual aircraft quickly enough.

Although it is not the sort of thing to drive everybody wild with excitement, for those who like beating their brains into a pulp on wet weekends watching Concorde carving up the rear end of a DC10, Heathrow ATC is what they have been looking for.

Chris Bourne