Producer: CRL, 48K
£5.95

This race simulation game offers all the fun of the gee-gees without the stress of attending a meeting; or replaces those parlour versions with the rolled out track and wooden horses that were once popular. Up to five players may bet either for points or pence - if it's money, you keep your own book, three levels are offered and when all is ready the computer scrolls the race before your eyes (machine code) slowing down to slow motion as the race nears the finish line. If required a photofinish is provided. Good instructions and graphics.

Producer: CRL, 48K
£5.95

This race simulation game offers all the fun of the gee-gees without the stress of attending a meeting; or replaces those parlour versions with the rolled out track and wooden horses that were once popular. Up to five players may bet either for points or pence - if it's money, you keep your own book, three levels are offered and when all is ready the computer scrolls the race before your eyes (machine code) slowing down to slow motion as the race nears the finish line. If required a photofinish is provided. Good instructions and graphics.

IT'S ALL A GAME...

James Walsh looks at some of the latest and greatest software for you Spectrum.

Games form the major portion of the software available for the Spectrum, so there is likely to be a pretty good choice available. But as with any market, there is the good and the bad. Though it is not difficult to differentiate when you're playing them on a computer, when they are staring at you from the pages of a glossy computer magazine, or sitting on the shelves of W.H. Smiths, then the choice is far more difficult. There are now the established producers of top quality software, such as Quicksilva and Artic, who can be relied upon to bring out good software. However, various new companies are now coming into the market with new and often exciting programs, some of them having the financial backing to compete with the Quicksilvas of this world and the market is definitely opening up at an alarming rate. For these reasons I am delighted to have new packages from one of my favourites, Artic, a new company, Imagine, and Computer Rental Limited.

I have to admit that when I first saw the title of this program I didn't exactly jump for joy; in fact, the thought of looking at another horse race program decidedly made my heart sink. Surely anybody can make three blobs race from one side of the screen to the other?

When I had recovered, I decided to take a risk and load it up. Derby Day takes well over the standard 16K of memory, so it took a little while to load, though it did load, and first go and all! The first screen of the game asks you what sort of punter you are... out for fun to deadly serious. Having pressed the key I was pleasantly surprised to see a well designed and colourful display fold out on to the screen. It included a very good picture of 'honest Clive', the bookmaker, which, though it is not three-dimensional still came over very well. A nice extra touch is a horse trotting across the top of the screen just above 'honest Clive', {I wonder what Uncle Clive would think?). When everybody has placed their bets (the game can accommodate anything from 1 to 5 players) the race begins...

Instead of just having the horses galloping across the screen, which they do do very well, the race course is also seen to be moving past them, hence making the track rather longer. One of the many nice touches is the fact that you can see little people standing at the side of the track, and when you come near to the finish the grandstand comes into view. The graphics, though not particularly fast or record-breaking, are well designed and nicely arranged. Sound has also been used reasonably well. Though this game seems to have been written almost entirely in BASIC, it has been structured to allow for reasonably good speed. Who wants race horses that are so fast that you can't see them anyway? it might have been a little more exciting if there had been fences so that the horses might fall, but it is still great fun. When the program is running the display is so arranged that it is difficult to miss.

Computer Rentals Ltd seem to be relatively new to the home computer software market, but obviously have reasonably good financial backing to place their good sized adverts. They also supply a program called Galactic Patrol for the 16K ZX81, some other games for the Spectrum, plus a few for the Dragon 32. If their other games are as good as Derby Day then they would definitely be worth thinking about.

So, to conclude, it can be said that the programmer has done a good job, especially considering the subject matter, and they have come up with a pretty good value-for-money cassette for the person who wants a quieter life than defending the world from aliens.

'Derby Day' is available at €6.95 from Computer Rentals Ltd, 140 Whitechapel Road, London E1.