WHO needs 30 packs of pure gold acupuncture needles? Hookey stuff, without a doubt, but that won't stop you from making a deal in Minder, based on the hit TV series.

Minder puts you in Arthur's shoes with a two grand stake and a fortnight to get rich. Visit the Winchester Club to make the contacts you'll need to buy your stock, or have a chat with proprietor Dave about the doings of the Old Bill, in the person of mean, moody, Inspector Chisholm.

When you've bought the goods you want, you'll have to try and sell them to one of the many shady dealers in the manor. If they're bent, Chisholm will be after you. And there's always the aggravation of trying to get hold of Terry to do the fetching and carrying. True to form, all Arthur ever does is count the money.

The game is played out through conversations with the many characters. There are up to 35,000, identified by an identikit style of graphics to build up their faces. You can use Arthur's own brand of cockney most of the time; the program recognises much slang, although at times you have to use a specific phrase to clinch a deal. You can also play a more devious game, selling goods you don't own and then trying to pick them up cheaply before time runs out to make a killing.

It's all great fun and very much like the TV show, except in so far as Terry's life as a minder, with all the violence and confusion, is barely mentioned. Unfortunately the game is marred by the occasional bug in the interpreter, so that conversations can go off the rails, with words missed out or the wrong prices agreed on.

That tends to destroy the illusion and show up the program as rather more simple than it appears when things function properly. However, you will never get the old 'I don't understand' comments.

There is plenty of humour, particularly in the extraordinary goods you will have to buy and sell. Chisholm can be a right pain at times, and you may have to cut your losses and dump bent stock to avoid being hassled on other deals. But the roots of Minder are still those of a fairly simple trading game, and although it may sustain itself for a while, it will ultimately become boring to play.

In all fairness, Minder could have been done extremely badly indeed, and to the credit of DK'tronics and Thames TV it is not at all bad. Just a bit more care at the final stages, with a touch more variety and depth to the conversations, and it could have been a classic.

MEET Deuteronomy, leader of the Jellicle cats in T S Eliot's poems and Andrew Lloyd Wallet's musical.

The cats' enemies, the Pollicle dogs, have hidden an object known, for some reason, as the Heavyside Layer. It is the focus of the cats mystic powers, and the dogs intend to destroy it - if they can form a pack. Meanwhile ten kittens have strayed off the astral staircase and must be collected and returned to the Heavyside Layer.

The whole heady brew of witchcraft and whiskers boils down to a basic Sabre Wulf style maze game. The playing area is very large, and a map is provided which can be consulted at will. The map shows the positions of dogs and kittens, thus enabling you to work out the best routes. Deuteronomy deals death in the form of fur-balls and carries stun powder.

The graphics are well-designed and attractive. The animation tends to be slow, particularly if you want to keep the sound effects, a wailing rendition of Memory.

Cats would be a sweet little number full of fun and novelty if it was not for one thing - the game is too easy. It was a good idea to allow sight of the map, but a time limit on that might be appropriate. Deuteronomy starts off with too many stamina points so that, with the obligatory nine lives, he can easily afford to die and come back with a full complement of strength.

When 24 dogs are in the den the pack is formed and you lose. Again, even at the highest level, using a couple of lives to exterminate dogs should even the odds sufficiently to give you time to complete your task. We managed to play straight through all five levels for a grand total of 7953025 points. No game ought to be that easy, surely?

BATTLING with aliens in space to gain a jumble of alphabetical letters is an odd but original theme. Melbourne House has come up trumps with Starion where your powers at sorting out anagrams will be called to the fore.

Starion constitutes a series of word puzzles and anagrams and is a fine mixture of arcade style graphics combined with strategy and superb 3D effects. A good general knowledge of history and spelling is essential.

The idea is to re-write 243 events in earth's history over the last few hundred years. Killing off enemy space craft causes them to drop letters which when collected form a word - though you have to unscramble it first to make sense. That word will change one event in history but it is up to you to choose the correct era.

The game is divided into time grids and time zones grouped in blocks of nine. In each zone, the letters have to be collected and a word formed to enable you to fly through the time warp - very tricky as its centre never remains still. Once through you reach the time grid, which allows you to choose the year to which your wordy cargo belongs and to head straight for Earth. If the word fits, you will then have to repeat the process in the remaining eight zones.

After re-writing history in all nine zones battle recommences taking you to a further eight time grids in the next block.

The screen shows the view outside the cockpit with your laser guns' cross hairs firmly centred in the middle. Aliens and flying debris hurtle towards you at great speeds giving the impression of flying forwards. It is no mean feat to hit the aliens due to their speed and erratic movement. Debris should be dodged to avoid damage to the craft.

At the bottom of the screen is the instrument panel displaying speed, the letters collected and two radar scanners which scan both horizontal and vertical fields.

When picking up the letters, lock them into the centre of the cross-hairs and fly forwards. One gripe is the length of time it takes for the letter to travel towards you, although it can be appreciated that the letter has to be redrawn continuously at it gets larger.

Starion can be viewed either as a light educational adventure in time or purely as an arcade game. Whatever view, it's well worth buying if only for the pleasure of turning history upside down.

AFICIONADOS of the turf will doubtless be queueing up for the latest Elite game, Grand National. If, however, you are seeking quick and easy reparations for your failure to back Last Suspect a few weeks ago, forget it.

The game is part simulation, part arcade in style. The first section involves choosing a mount for the race. You are offered a selection from the field, and information for the condition of the course.

Then it is into the arcade section for the race itself. An overhead view of the course shows other horses attempting to get into position. A further screen in the corner shows a view of the horse from the side, to enable you to judge the jumps as they come. That is the difficult part. You have to jump at just the right point to clear the fence, and must have built up a fair speed through constant use of the whip.

The graphics are a little lacklustre and the excellent animation does mean the horses, although realistic, move somewhat slowly. More of an amble than a gallop, one might say. The frustration of falling off your horse at the first fence 25 times in a row is off-putting, but you will eventually find it possible to complete at least one lap before your nag finally flops to the ground in total exhaustion.

JONATHAN Miller has popped up again, following his success with the TV series The Body in Question last year and has produced Body Works with Genesis Productions - a program which shows in clear and illustrated detail various functions of the body.

Cells, respiration, digestion, muscles, nerves, circulation are all detailed and a marathon simulation ties the whole program together showing how each functions under stress.

So, if you have an overwhelming desire to know how nerves transmit messages to the brain - load it, sit back, look and learn. Each function is graphically illustrated for you and, as for straining yourself, all you have to do is press the space bar occasionally to move to the next stage.

There are two cassettes, a poster and booklet describing each process in the package, which probably accounts for the high price. The programs for each function are very short and slow.

If the message takes as long to get to the brain as it does on the program, you would be dead long before it got there.

TEXT adventures may soon become a thing of the past if Beyond Software has its way.

Shadowfire is an icon-driven strategic adventure - the first ever on the Spectrum - where commands are issued through pictures and text is obsolete.

You join Enigma - a fierce and independent fighting force - whose mission is to storm the planet Zoff V and free Ambassador Kryxix. Once on Zoff V, Enigma has to search through the maze of corridors, fighting General Zoff's guards, locate the ambassador and transport him to safety.

Each member of the team is controlled individually - Zark, Syylk, Sevrina, Torik, Maul and Manto and each has its own skills, strengths and weaknesses. Those will need to be co-ordinated and decisions made accordingly. Sevrina is a lock picker and her skills will be needed on Zoff V therefore she should be given a tool kit from the weapons screen.

You start with a screen, depicting all six characters, each portrayed in a different colour to help identification - although on this first screen the graphics are so clear that each is instantly recognisable. Having selected the character you want to move with a cursor, you then switch to the weapons screen to equip each with some mind blowing secret weapon.

The icons are many and varied. Each has a separate function and is selected with a scrolling cursor. Move the cursor to the function you want a character to perform - pick up - then along to a laser gun; press enter and that character will receive that weapon.

Each order is performed in a similar manner throughout the game. Some confusion may arise as certain pictures are not clear. However, referring to the comprehensive illustrated booklet should solve any such problems.

The graphics deserve a mention. For the most part, they are clearly depicted and colourful though, unfortunately, their small size tends to make definition hard. Each screen is divided into a number of boxes, all containing control icons. The screen showing Zoff V and your route to Kryxix is almost lost in the top middle section. It is a pity that this space has been sacrificed to give more attention to the controls.

You are given 100 minutes to complete Shadowfire and a real time clock ticks away the seconds. However it will take considerably longer to learn the game, especially if you keep breaking out of it by mistake. It is very easy to exit by accident. Accidental pressure on Enter when you go back to choose another character will take you straight back to the menu. It always seems to happen at some vital point of the game and is enough to turn you to drink.

Shadowfire is excellent value considering the programming expertise which has gone into the game. If you want a quick load-it-up and shoot-it-down then don't waste your money. However, if you want a fast and innovative game which may well take weeks to complete - buy it.

AFTER ALL those crashes and programming problems the last thing you may want to do is to make your Spectrum talk, but that is possible with Varitalk from ITS Software.

It works in a similar way to that old hardware warhorse, the Currah Speech Unit, but it is all done with software. The program is user-transparent - in other words you cannot see any results unless you do some hard work - and gives the Spectrum a library of 52 phonetically encoded sounds. A list of those codes is given on the instruction inlay.

The codes are easy to decipher. You type in a two-figure code, which represents a sound, into your Basic program. If you want a specific 'A' sound you would look at the section of codes beginning with 'A'. Each section has six types of sound. If you needed that 'A' to sound like the 'A' which is in FAR you would find that type of sound - FAR - is third on the 'A' list making the code A3.

Next you can put the codes into a special variable T$ and make one machine code call which enables the Spectrum to pronounce your message. For instance, 'TALK' requires the code 'T1A6H2K1'.

Varitalk is an excellent toy and we had a lot of fun playing with it. Unfortunately, all those codes can be a put off.

MENTION Peace Studies in some quarters and the reaction is likely to be paranoid with accusations of left wing indoctrination flying through the air. This is a shame because peace studies can help young people find a way through the propaganda which is put out by all sorts of organisations from both sides of the political spectrum.

Worldwise: Nuclear Weapons is a study of nuclear weapons around the world aimed at secondary schools. It is informative without being biased. The program is based on an atlas of the world and countries can be chosen and magnified if desired. Lists of each country's nuclear capabilities together with fire power are shown and positioned on a map. After students have familiarised themselves with the maps and weaponry, they can play simulation games aimed at arms reduction and gradually remove weapons from the map.

For £2, users of Worldwise can join WUG (Worldwise Users Group), receive extra copies of the program for £2.50 and microdrive versions for £4.00. The database contained in Worldwise will be updated and members of the user group can update their programs at favourable part exchange rates.

Worldwise illustrates the problems surrounding arms negotiations, and above all the frightening amount of weaponry which exists to kill and maim future generations. The bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were damp squibs compared with current arsenals. Information such as this is necessary if the debate about nuclear weapons is to have any real meaning.

A NAKED ATTEMPT to cash in on the popularity of Daley Thompson's Decathlon, Brian Jack's Superstar Challenge pits your joystick-powered body against he-man Brian Jacks in eight events drawn from the TV sports series in which athletes compete at a range of sports.

Each side of the tape contains four events. Those divide into two types. There are the ones like canoeing or cycling where you have to pump the joystick left and right as hard as you can, and there are others like archery or squat thrusts where skill at judging when to fire or change direction is paramount.

The animation is poor and only occupies a small part of the screen. The races are particularly disappointing as the competitors barely move at all and stay in the centre of the screen.

The football event where you must dribble round four cones and then shoot at a goalkeeper we found unplayable and totally unrealistic. The other events bear some relation to their originals, but squat thrusts and arm dips are not the most exciting of activities to watch or perform, in the sweaty flesh or on screen.

It is fairly easy to beat Brian on the early levels of the game, and doubtful whether many would wish to continue to higher levels to receive their thrashing. You'll have more fun drinking glucose and pumping iron all day.

IS LEGEND taking its revenge on the computer press for its opinions of the Great Space Hype? If so, it has the perfect weapon in Komplex.

To begin with, you have to plough through pages of miniscule and illegible instructions. The aim is to descend the many levels of an alien planet picking up the letters, K, 0, M, P, L, E and X in order and storing them in a central computer.

Despite the title the game is simple. Target Sensors on your control panel turn from red to green as you approach a letter and pinpoint a telephone booth shaped object, called a Rack. Docking with the Rack releases the letter into your cargo hold.

Docking with Service Tubes takes you through a tunnel to the next level. In this phase you control a single laser shield to fend off approaching aliens. If your craft sustains too much damage you will be unable to pick up a letter on the next level.

Sound is minimal and the graphics are basic and wireframe, though good 3D and masking techniques are used.

All this makes for mundane and plodding entertainment, considerably less fun than the arcade oldie Battlezone, of which it is but a thinly disguised version.

It is, however, the optical effects which really put this game in a class of its own. The screen flashes red on and off continuously, as your ship is battered with a hail of laser fire. Headbangers might enjoy this rape of the eyeballs but, frankly, it gave me a headache.