Type-Rope

Crash

Rosetta McLeod

CRASH COURSE Rosetta McLeod EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE: THE STATE OF PLAY Welcome to the first Crash Course of 1986. This is an appropriate time for looking back over the events of the old year as well as making wishes for the new. 1985 saw a tremendous upsurge in the number of commercially available educational programs, particularly for use with younger children. Most educational publishers have now linked software with their own reading schemes (for instance, the Sinclair/MacMillan programs reviewed below), and, of course, this is the ideal way forward. It is also good to see that some software houses are including audio tapes in their packages, and I hope this is a development we'll see more of in 1986. Older children, however, especially the 12 plus age group, are still not being particularly well catered for, and what is needed is for secondary teachers and publishers to get together to design programs with a high degree of educational relevance. Unfortunately, the industrial action by teachers throughout Britain in 1985 has done much to bring to a halt the development of new ideas in computer-based learning. Let's hope that 1986 will see more creativity in software and a move away from the kinds of application which tend to trivialise the potential of both the computer and the child. Another hope for 1986 regards the increased availability of educational software in the high street stores. With the creation of the British Educational Software Associates at the end of last year, it is to be hoped that their aim of improving software distribution both to the home and school market will be realised, and that the service I mentioned in last issue will be extended during this year. The past few years have been a period of experimentation in the field of computer-assisted learning, Now is the time for us to expand upon the good ideas that have emerged, with a view to providing a much better range of educational software in the future. TYPE-ROPE Producer: Mastertronic Retail Price: £1.99 Age Range: Younger children The aim of this game is to use the keyboard to untie the various characters by matching the correct letters and numbers. The quicker your reactions, the more points you get. On the left hand side of the screen, you see the character tied up with lengths of rope, one end of each piece labelled with a letter, the other with a number. By pairing the correct letter and number, the player frees the character. The cover blurb tells us that "this ingenious program has been carefully designed for younger children and apart from providing them with endless hours of fun, it will help them with many aspects of their education." I'm afraid I fail to see the educational value of this game. It may have a use in teaching the layout of the QWERTY keyboard, but there are other games which do this better Marketing programs like this under an educational banner is a bit dubious. COMMENTS Control keys: whole keyboard Keyboard play good Use of colour: fair Graphics: very limited and dull

All tied up in Mastertronic's TYPE ROPE. Untangle the poor person on the left by keying in the characters at either end of the ropes.

ZX Computing

The grand old masters of budget software are still active and still keeping prices to £1.99. We've seen two new programs from them, both aimed at the younger user, but this should not deny more mature gamesters looking at them. TYPE ROPE is a simple game where a picture is drawn of the cute character who is tied up with ropes. The ends of these ropes are attached to pegs marked with a letter or number and by pressing the connecting letters/numbers the rope is released and you have to free the character before time runs out! This is a simple game based on the "trace the path" puzzle found in many children's comics. With the time element and the well judged difficulty level this game can be enjoyed by all ages. I liked it.