Producer: Longman
Memory Required: 16K
Retail Price: £7.95
Software: by Micromega, Tony Poulton

Robot Runner is a number game for children aged 6 years and upwards. Pilot your robot across the number ways of Andron. You'll need to know your tables and be prepared for unknown dangers of a far off planet.

When the tape has loaded the player's name can be entered, after which a menu comes up asking which multiplication table you want to use from 1x to 9x or a mixture. Having selected the table the screen cuts to the coloured number ways, five In all. The robot runner stands at the bottom, waiting to enter the first way. Down this first way comes a sum, say 2 x 7. Using the cursor keys 6 (down) and 7 (up) a figure at the top left can be made to increase or decrease. When it reaches the right figure (14 in this case), your robot may cross safely. Now in the second way another sum appears and you continue in this fashion across the 'ways'. When he has reached the fifth way you may guide him to one of several treasures on the right of the screen; when these have all gone, you progress onto another and more dangerous screen.

The cursor keys 5 (left) and 8 (right) are used to guide the robot across the ways. To make life more exciting there are de-energising obstacles that live on the ways and float down, threatening the robot unless you can get the sum right quickly and move on, but the cursor keys are also used to avoid them if all else fails.

The game is accompanied by parental program notes and full instructions for using the game. Loading screens are very good, and the use of colour throughout is excellent.

Do you remember chanting out your tables at school? I certainly do land I'm not that old!), though there was little emphasis on whether pupils actually understood what the recitations meant. Robot Runner gives children practice in the 2 to 9 multiplication tables. The player has to answer the sum correctly in order to move Robot Runner across the screen to retrieve the stolen treasure of Endor. There are, however, all sorts of obstacles to be avoided on the way. At the beginning, the menu allows you to choose which of the nine tables to practise alternatively you can opt for a mixture. Instead of having to press the number keys for the correct answer, the player uses the two vertical cursors to increase or decrease the runner's speed to the number wanted. Certainly, the game element in this program is much more interesting than in Sum Scruncher, and the game is quite a useful way of reinforcing the tables.

GENERAL RATING

All of the programs are well error-trapped but, with the exception of a,b,c... Lift Off!, they have little of real merit to commend them. This isn't to say that they are bad programs, but simply that they are no better or worse than other educational software which relies mainly on an arcade format to sweeten the drill/practice pill. They all run well, however, and are easy enough to use, but are lacking in flexibility and, generally speaking, belong more to the education system of the past than to the computer age.

The programs all cost £7.95 and will run on the 16 or 48K Spectrum.