Producer: Gremlin Graphics
Retail Price: £7.99

Compendium is a four-pack of familiar board games with a tiddly twist - it's presented as an ordinary tale of the everyday Wink family. Father Wink, a not-so-secret tippler, his wife Mavis, their three children Ralph, Victoria and Tiny Tim, and Sniffer the dog make up the weird Wink household.

The Winks spend their time upon this planet playing Snakes And Hazards, Christmas Ludo, Shove-A-Sledge and Tiddly Drinks.

In Snakes And Hazards, the children and their dog aim to get from the bottom left corner, square 1, and reach the upper left square - number 100 on the chequered game board. Whoever gets there first is the winner.

The players take it in turns to move a number of squares determined by the automatic throw of dice. A display beneath the main screen indicates the present square a character stands on, and the square that they should move to after the throw.

If one of the characters lands on a square containing the foot of a ladder, they go to the top of it, thus avoiding intervening hazards. These include snakes which sprawl across the playing area - if a player lands on a square which incorporates a snake's head, the unlucky victim slides down the serpent till the end of its tail is reached.

But in Snakes And Hazards there are more problems than you find in real Snakes And Ladders, because the non-playing members of the Wink family interfere and attempt to push their children and dog on to the squares with snake heads.

Still, none of the playing Winks are particularly interested in what they're doing, and this creates the ideal opportunity for the other players to distract them - by picking up objects they might find on the board and dropping them in the path of others.

With luck, the wicked Winks will be diverted by what's dropped in their path. For example, Sniffer stops at lampposts, the baby at a dummy, Ralph at reference books, and Victoria at the telephone.

But Shady Leaf the holly piece, Meanus Puddus and Sam Snake are further crazy creations which can end a player's life straight away if they make contact.

After Snakes And Hazards comes Christmas Ludo. Again the Wink children and Sniffer are involved. Each player has four counters which must be moved from their individual bedrooms around a four-armed Ludo board to reach the safety of the HOME square.

To put a counter into play, a 6 must be showing on the thrown dice. Each counter carries the initial of the player it belongs to. When a 6 is shown another go is allowed. If a counter lands upon another, the lower counter is removed from the board.

This time, mum and dad Wink patrol the board and contact with them immediately ends a player's turn.

At last Mavis and Tiddly, along with Victoria and Ralph, get in on the games-playing act in Shove-A-Sledge. Snow is thick on the ground and Tiny Tim wants to sledge, but he needs some help to push him.

So a grid is marked in the snow with ten divisions, and each of the Wink players has three turns in which to push the sledge between the division lines. The winner is the player who manages to do this successfully in all ten divisions.

A good run up is needed to push the sledge, which can be positioned at the start line, but if the sledge is shoved too hard Tiny Tim may not be home from hospital in time for Tiddly Drinks.

And Sniffer does his best to hinder all this by scampering about in the run-up area.

Almost exhausted by so much activity the Winks come to their final game, Tiddly Drinks. Old Tiddly himself is down at the pub, rather drunk and being irritating. The barmaid serves Tiddly with between one and six pints of beer and after quaffing these drinks at the bar, a tiddly Tiddly wanders away throwing the empty glasses into the air one by one.

Mavis, Victoria, Ralph and Sniffer take it in turns to position themselves as best they can to catch the arcing glassware before it lands upon the floor. A shadow upon the ground gives them some help in judging where the glass will land.

The winner is the Wink who has caught most glasses by closing time.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: festive but fun
Sound: a wide range of Christmas tunes
Options: 1-4 players

Compendium was a brilliant game for the Christmas season, with snow all over the ground and its of little festive ditties, but seems less interesting in the cold light of January. But the graphics are excellent whatever the season, with bright characters, detailed playing boards and background scenery.
NICK [83%]

Let's face it, board games are for boards, and computer games for computers. Sometimes they mix - but more than often the licence of a board game turns out as a miserable translations. And all the subgames in Compendium are very boring and repetitive. There's no computer opponent, which is a major flaw - this always limits the life span and appeal of a game no matter what it's like. Tiddly Drinks is a strange part of Compendium because it has to resemblance to any board game, or even to tiddlywinks. And to make Compendium even less appealing there's a decidedly Christmassy feel.
PAUL [48%]

Gremlin
£7.99
Reviewer: David Powell

There have been several games like Monopoly converted to computer games, although before now software houses had sensibly avoided the really traditional 'bored' games. But with Compendium, Gremlin has changed all that - free stickers or no!

Three of these ol' grandpappies of the modem board game have been reincarnated here, together with a totally original pub set-up that'll suit all us devotees of the great God Bacchus (slurp!) But they're not as you remember them. Out go the traditional counters and in come the Wink family, a typically normal group of reprobates. Up to four of them can play in each game - the remaining two only seem to get in your way.

This is particularly a problem in Snakes And Hazards, where you have several creatures all trying to push you to the heads of the snakes, and other objects too which you can bung in front of opponents to slow 'em down. Why bother, I ask? A normal game takes long enough as it is! Here it took me just under an hour to complete a one-player game (too many snakes, too few ladders). Bo-ring.

Xmas Ludo is no better, as before you can move a piece, you have to get to it first! With Mavis and Tiddly to worry about, it's like a race between a hare and a tortoise. Worse still, you need to throw a six to get one piece on the board, but the authors don't like that number - rare ain't the word.

Shove-A-Sledge is a neat adaption of the once popular pub game and is at least partly a game of skill (unlike the others), but control is so tough that you get the sled-in-a-bed more by luck than judgement.

There are nice touches throughout the collection, like the little tunes that greet each character's appearance (better be ready with the 'sound off' key, though). The cute monochrome graphics are good, especially in Tiddly Drinks, which sadly is better to watch than to play. It's rather a pain trying to catch Dad's empty glasses, anyway - gimme a full one any day.

Since the best parts of all are probably the loading screens, which rate as fab and a half - at least the first time - let me tip you the Wink. Compendium's full of good ideas, but its slowness too often takes all the fun out of it. My advice: nip up to the loft, grab the real McCoy (He's dead, Jim. Ed), dust 'em down and give me a call when the gargle's a-flowing!

Label: Gremlin
Author: Steve Marsden
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

In a fit of generosity, Gremlin has provided Compendium, four games for the price of one.

Join the Wink family in four bouts of jolly jappery, and play Shove a Sledge, Tiddly Drinks, Christmas Ludo and Snakes and Hazards.

Compendium is, you may have guessed, slightly way out versions of traditional games. For instance. Tiddly Drinks has you catching not plastic counters, but empty pint glasses, thrown by the Father Wink. Snakes and Hazards gives you real snakes!

To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not a fan. I've always thought that the only real fun to be had as far as board games go is the cheating aspect. If you can't cheat like hell there's absolutely no point in playing them. And as the computer chooses how many you've thrown (no chance of nobbling the dice here) you're a bit stuck. There are certain things you can do though, that aren't entirely fair play. Snakes and Hazards allows you to throw things in your opponent's way. Present Victoria with a telephone, Ralph with a computer, Tiny Tim with a teddy, Sniffer the dog with a lampost, and they'll stay on that particular square until the next go, so some tactical cheating is almost called for.

But it's not the same is it, as setting fire to the dice? There's not an awful lot of cheating to be had in Ludo either. It's a question of playing the usual game, but avoiding Mum and Dad, this being Christmas Eve.

Shove a Sledge, I presume is a variation on Shove Ha'penny, but I'm not really old enough to remember that sort of thing. The game involves pushing Tiny Tim in his sledge, trying to stop the sledge in one of ten marked out squares. First player to land their sledge in all of the marked squares wins. I had twenty-seven goes at this game, and only landed the sledge in one box once.

Finally there's Tiddly Drinks. Father Wink will drink anything from 1-6 pints (there's nothing like moderation) and will then chuck the empty glasses for one member of his horrendous family to catch. Keep going till closing time and then the person who caught the most glasses is the winner.

I can't help feeling that all these games are much better left in their original forms. They don't gain anything from being on computer, apart from the obvious benefit of being able to play Ludo all by yourself if you're the sort of person without any friends.

Sadly there's not a lot that you can do to kiddies board games that will turn them into something special.