Slalom

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

WHAT A LOAD...! SHIP OF THE LINE Two games from Croydon based Premier Publications, who have the audacity in the light of this cassette, to style themselves "Britain's biggest hobby software specialists." If the rest of the software is as badly presented as this cassette then they should think again! Ship of the line proved impossible to load, and this was not surprising when the program is interspersed with people talking! Alpha-square, which was a very unreliable loaded, is a simple letter puzzle where the 24 letters A to X are arranged in a 5x5 grid, with one empty space. The object - just like those plastic puzzles - is to get the letters into alphabetical order moving individual, a whole row of letters. The instructions come on a scrappy piece of paper, but were quite clear. The graphics are good with no flashing screen a letter move, and the cassette sells for £3.95. It was a pity about Ship of the line which costs £5.95 as it seemed to be quite a well thought out warship game, with varying wind direction to complicate the tactics. It runs on a Sinclair ZX81 with a 16K RAM pack. Also available for the Sinclair's new memory pack are two games from JRS Software of Worthing, which use the graphics facilities near their best. Slalom, £4.95, is a race against time. You have to negotiate 14 posts, making sure that none are missed, or that none are hit. The concept of the game, and its implementations, are good. However, with a little thought it could have been much better. The posts are all in a straight line and equidistant. A simple key sequence of: cursor down, cursor down, cursor right, cursor right and so on gets you to the finish safely. Black Holes, £6.40, is quite a fiendish game. A pattern of reverse field zeros approaches constantly. Within this pattern is a pathway to be navigated using the cursor left or right keys. In both these games the documentation is not too hot.