15 Graphic Games for the Spectrum

Personal Computer News

John Lettice

'15 Graphic Games for the Spectrum' by Richard Hurley, published by Micro Press at £5.95 (paperback, 115 pages). The fun-per-penny ratio is probably the most important criterion for judging games listing books, but there are other ways of sorting out the wheat from the chaff. The clarity of the listings is important, and for the beginner, notes on what the various routines in the programs actually do can be valuable. '15 Graphic Games for the Spectrum' probably passes on fun-per-penny - you can get books with more games. But in most cases the ones here have an original twist, and old stagers like Hangman don't put in an appearance. You do get City Bomber, Fruit Machine, Surround and Othello, games which no embryonic Spectrum library should be without. The listings, oddly enough, seem to have been done on a Tandy printer/plotter. This makes them a lot clearer, but it does mean the line length is wrong for the Spectrum, and the user defined graphics are a little odd. These come out in lower case, and are underlined so you know to shift to graphics mode. The notes are sketchy. There's enough there for you to be able to type the games in fairly easily, but if you're actually in the market for a book that will give you a games library and teach you about programming, you'd be Micro hobbyists, fascinated by tricks and puzzles, will find many games in this book still better looking elsewhere. That said, few program notes means value for money.