EXCLUSIVE

LAST MONTH I reviewed The Artist, from Softechnics, and said there was nothing which could beat it.

I was proved wrong. Art Studio, from OCP, outclasses it in speed and style. Once loaded from disc or tape, the program display is set to white with a blue double-decked bar menu across the top of the screen. Near that is an arrow cursor which can be manipulated using the. keyboard, joystick, or Kempston mouse.

To select an option on the menu, the cursor must be moved over it and the fire button pushed.

As well as being able to draw single lines, by placing two points on the screen with the cursor, you can extend lines to create shapes such as triangles and elastic banded lines. Elastic banding starts from a specified point. The potential line is then dragged across the screen by the cursor and set in position by pressing the fire key.

Once you have produced your drawing you can start to fill it in with solid colour. or one of the textures provided on the FILL menu. Those include roof slates, brick structures, lines and dots.

To produce a fill effect, all you have to do is put the cursor inside the shape, and press the fire button. The shape is first filled with a backdrop of colour and the texture is then dropped in.

The most impressive part of the package is its ability to cut and paste parts of screen pictures. That process is accomplished using windows. You must first put a window around the shape which is to be transferred to another part of the screen. Then choose one of two options. The first allows you to do a straight copy of a shape, the original remaining on the screen. The second performs nearly the same operation but the original is cut out and a hole left on the screen.

While the cut and paste up operation is taking place it is possible to change the scale of the shape along the X and Y axes. To do that, open a window using the cursor, set it to the position in which you want the new shape to appear and make that window larger or smaller.

The only problem when using windows to achieve those results is that a rectangular patch is left in place of the shape. The screen then has to be retouched with the package's pen.

Apart from that one flaw, the package out-performs The Artist in almost every way. It has superior speed to the Softechnics package and the menus are easier to use. It can be used with disc, tape or microdrive and contains a printer driver which handles most compatible Spectrum printers. It is an extremely powerful utility which should be of use to professional artists and designers as well as the home user.

IT IS OFTEN impossible to know what to do if a program crashes, or won't load. How many times can you face taking a duff tape back to the shop and asking for a new one?

What many people forget is it could easily be the tape recorder causing the problem. Tape is grotty stuff. The oxides rub off on the heads and make a mess - it's like sandpaper. Also, the heads come adrift and change position. The alignment of the heads is called the azimuth and Global has produced a piece of software to cure all ills.

Operation Caretaker contains two cassettes and a screw driver. One cassette is a tape cleaner, a strip of fibrous material which rubs against the heads and collects the filth.

The second cassette is a program which sends out a steady stream of data and then interprets it. The data is sent through at a high speed to make it difficult to read, and a display shows you how many bytes were accurately read. You then stick the screwdriver into the azimuth screw on the tape deck and twiddle it until the readings are as good as you can get.

They tend to be a little different on each side of the tape, which is confusing, but there should be a narrow area where both are at their best. That's the point you want. As far as we could test it, the program seemed to work.

Of course, the program is fairly useless if you haven't got a cassette recorder with a little hole in it for adjusting the tape heads.

The package will remove a great deal of aggravation with tapes which won't load. Next time you go down to the shops to complain, you'll know you're in the right.

YOUR TARGET is Germany's dam system, the object is to blow them out of the water. The result is the destruction of the military and industrial infrastructure of the German war machine.

Dam Busters is not just another flight simulation with added special effects. During the game you have to play the part of the pilot, front and rear gunners, bomb aimer, navigator and engineer. You must do all that while flying through enemy territory, continually lit by searchlights while being buffeted by flak.

You must guide the aircraft off the ground and head towards France and Germany. You will have to liaise with your engineer to make sure that the engine thrust is not to great. If it is the engines will catch fire.

As navigator you must use the maps to pinpoint your position and get the pilot to alter course if necessary. It may appear to be a simple job but you will also have to pilot the aircraft while looking for cities, industrial complexes or dams.

The front and tail gunners have similar jobs. When you get to an enemy complex you must take on their roles and fire at searchlights, balloons and enemy fighters. The pilot should be wary of flying too near towns even if your natural inclination as a gunner is to blow everything to bits.

If you do not keep a keen eye on your instruments you could stall, overheat, fly through enemy soil or end up swimming back to England.

Each crew member has a screen full of instruments which can be controlled by joystick or keyboard. You must look through all of them at regular intervals. The game is not, however, as impossible as it seems. The controls are touch sensitive and the aircraft is easy to fly. Attacks from enemy guns and the glare of the searchlights can be handled quickly if you even have only a few flying hours' experience.

When you have found a dam your approach should be carefully timed. You must have developed the ability to be at 232 mph, have an altitude of 60 feet and be exactly 800 yards from the dam when you drop the bomb. The practice approach available should increase your skill.

Dam Busters is excellent three-in-one entertainment which can be recommended to anyone. Arcade, strategy and simulation addicts will find all they require is just the push of a fire button away.

If you don't want to risk your luck in the air you could always go for the Lancaster kit offer from Airfix, included with the package.

INNOCENT or not, Monty has escaped from gaol and plans to flee the country aboard a waiting ship in Monty on the Run. From the safe house he must get through the maze of tunnels and sewers, picking up cash and objects en route.

He needs cash for his new life and objects to help him through the dangers that lurk in the maze of platformed areas. Not all objects will help him - some are extremely dangerous to Monty and some completely useless.

Cash lies about the place - heavily guarded by nasty teapots - together with bouncing grandmother clocks, Hush Puppy dog lookalikes, machines which will flatten Monty and low flying insects. As he goes through each section the nasties become more bizarre.

Climbing up ropes, jumping across lakes and somersaulting onto platforms, are all within Monty's capabilities. Each of his skills are constantly tested throughout the game as the nasties stamp about after Monty.

The animated graphics are a great improvement on the early Monty games. No doubt the quality of this new game will ensure that we will see a mole lot more of Monty games.

SUPERB, life like, graphics have been used in Run for Gold, the latest offering for armchair athletes.

You must compete in the 400 meters, 800 meters and the 1500 meters. Qualify first in the local races before entering the main events which lead to the Olympics and gold medals.

Although you can control the speed of your athlete as you guide him through the bends and straights, you will do better if the computer does the steering for you. In both the 400 and 800 meters you start off on a bend and your wobbly-legged hero has no intention of staying on the track unless you let the computer play too.

Other athletes are a problem - they all look like your boy, and when they all stand together waiting for the starting orders, panic grips you. Which one is mine?

Legs rise and fall, calf muscles ripple and the race is on. Using the joystick, speed is produced by pushing full forward - but wait, he does not seem to be moving any faster.

The answer lies at the side of the screen in two box scales - one for energy level, the other for speed. It is only from those boxes that you have visual evidence that his energy and speed are indeed increasing or decreasing.

Even when the scales tell you that he has run out of both resources he still glides along the track! What a shame after producing such truly gold medal standard graphics.

If you want the finger aching action found in Daley Thompson's Decathlon you will not find it here.

OH NO! Not another racing car game! Despite Pole Position being a direct descendant of the famous arcade game it is still hard not to be cynical.

The game begins with a qualifying lap to determine which one of the eight grid positions you take for the race. Score, time left, speed, gears and laps completed, are displayed throughout the trial and race.

You have a view of the race from the rear of your car and control the steering, gears and brakes. What about speed? That increases at a set pace only as long as you remain on the track.

Racing through the straights and chicanes, you must qualify within a set time. Your car will be replaced following each crash until your time runs out.

It always seems that you reach a respectable speed - 200 mph plus when approaching a bend. Attempting to brake and pass a car usually sends you careering off the track towards a lurking roadsign. Crash! Ugh! Fun?

Having qualified you now compete in the main race. The same obstacles appear, although there are more of them.

Points are scored in both events for remaining on the track and passing rival cars. Upon successful completion of the race you are awarded extended play. To make the game more challenging, your time limit drops each time you finish a race, your car speeds up and more cars and roadsigns appear.

Generally the graphics are good; your car does look like a formula racing machine. Flickering red and white lines mark the edge of the circuit and give a realistic illusion of movement to the game. There again, that also makes for uncomfortable viewing.

What lets the graphics down is the untidy sequence following a crash. On impact, the car explodes and is slowly replaced by a new one. Vital seconds are lost.

Be warned. If you like to play games where 10 fingers are never enough you won't enjoy this one. So steer clear.

COULD the title refer to your mental state if you actually buy this game?

"Three explorers are trapped at the bottom of deep caves", reads the inlay card. "Armed with luck and a hot air balloon you must descend into the caverns to save them."

Set in a graphically sparse mountainous landscape, the game involves manoeuvring your balloon through the tunnel. Barring your way, through stage one, is a boring old alien and a parachute. Those must be avoided as well as the jagged edges of the cavern.

At the start of each new game you can select to play any one of the three levels of difficulty. Each level features an increased number of obstacles.

Okay, so the game is cheap. You might, nevertheless, be wiser to type in one of the listings in Sinclair User.

Central Solutions proudly announces on the inlay card that a C15 blank cassette is yours upon writing to them. Is that a form of compensation?

THE MYONS are back again, after a year or so of inactivity, with Codename MAT II, another epic saga of alien-zapping from the mind of Derek Brewster.

This time it's a grid of satellites you are defending from the rotten galactic sprites, which power the Karillium mines of Vesta, without which substance millions will never ... well, stuff the scenario. It's the zapping that counts.

The game has a terminal case of the beam-me-ups. Your spaceship has lots and lots of gadgets like ion engines, plasma guns, two scanners, and so on. All good solid stuff bought cheap off an old episode of Star Trek. They need a lot of keys to operate.

The screen shows the standard cockpit view, and an array of instruments. A smaller screen in the corner can be set to show the whole grid, or sector scans, or a detailed account of the status of your ship. Damage can be repaired by two droids which operate while you play.

Death comes when your shields are penetrated, or your lasers overheat, or something equally vile such as drifting about with no engines left. At the end of each wave - there are eight, repeated with more nasties for a total of 256 - you can repair satellites, your ship, or move satellites around to try and maintain the most efficient grid.

Despite its creaky concept, the game is mightily addictive. Later waves of aliens become both cunning and ferocious, spreading themselves thinly to attack as many satellites as they can, or grouping in force and homing in on you. Touches like that, plus damage reports and the need to make tactical decisions about the repair droids or where to warp to next, certainly increase the illusion of being a middle-aged actor with a spreading waist and an abiding love of ultra-rational Vulcans.

HOSPITALS have never been popular places and with its boast, 'Worst hospital in the world,' St Crippens won't change that. Patients never recover and often disappear for ever.

Guiding your patient around you explore the rooms searching for clothes - essential to your escape. Hospital staff will pursue you. There are bedpans lying about the ward floors, mutants in the Genetic Engineering Department and mould on the kitchen floor. All must be avoided.

Detailed graphics are limited and barely adequate. There are patients strung up in beds wearing body plasters or playing darts in the games room; the matrons have buns in their hair. It is difficult to pick out your patient amongst the swarm after him, as all characters tend to look alike.

Controlling the patient is tiresome. He refuses to react immediately and often gets caught.

It is sold at the cheaper end of the market, but it could do with a shot in the arm or a medical examination before release.

THE FIRST thing you'll notice about Super League is the price; £19.95 is steep for any game. This time it is a computer-moderated board game, and we suppose the price has something to do with all the bits of cardboard and money and dice.

What you do is manage a team, through a league season. The computer handles the league tables, random events, and fixes the gate money.

There are two stages. First you are shown the week's draw of matches on the computer. Teams travel from wherever they were last time around, and if a home team arrives at its own ground with a move in hand over its opponent, it gets to buy a player, which increases the points value of the team.

The second stage is the match. Again the dice are thrown and referred to a table which translates the score into points. After that, teams can play Match Cards - if they have them to nobble the opposition.

It is a likeable game, not really very faithful to football and not really requiring a computer, most of whose functions could easily be carried out by the players. We tried hard to like it more, but there are some niggles. The instructions on the box lid are ambiguous in places, particularly regarding movement and in what order players should move.

Those flaws serve to irritate. For the price one expects everything to be done perfectly. and our rating reflects that. If you don't mind clarifying the rules yourself and have plenty of dough then you can get a lot of fun out of Super League. Perhaps that's why it was launched in Harrods.